Sleep Without Dreams
by totallybursar
Summary: Katy Shepard is the leader of an Earth street gang called the Tenth Street Reds. Thane Krios is an assassin with a deadly reputation. They're both living the sleep without dreams. Mass Effect AU, containing characters and events from all three games but not to canon. Rated for adult situations and language.
1. The Day the World Changed Forever

_Summary:_

_Katy Shepard is the leader of an Earth street gang called the Tenth Street Reds. Thane Krios is an assassin with a deadly reputation. They're both living the sleep without dreams._

_Mass Effect AU. Will contain some characters, events and plot points from all three games, though not necessarily as they happen in game canon. Character personalities will **generally** be true to canon, but character timelines and histories have been altered._

_Rated M for adult themes and language._

* * *

_Introduction_

_First, the blanket statement: Characters et cetera all belong Bioware. I just make with the stories about them. Please no sue._

_Second, __**this is an AU fic**__. It does NOT follow the storyline of any of the three games, though it takes elements from them. Also, character timelines and histories have been altered, in some cases significantly. If this does not appeal to you, please do not read. _

_Third, I hate my brain for this._

* * *

**Sleep Without Dreams**

**Prologue**

_**The Day the World Changed Forever**_

Kathryn Shepard was six, and the hot San Diego sun burned down on the top of her freshly shorn red curls. Her speckled green eyes stared at the big polished box on it's stand, and at the man in his black suit with the white collar at his throat. Her freckled nose wrinkled at the smell in the air - something heavy and cloying and fake, like the air freshener in the foyer of their apartment building that somehow managed to neither eliminate or cover up the stink of the place, but instead permuted the other odors into something truly horrible. Her scratchy new dress rubbed the back of her neck and under her arms and around her middle.

She tugged at her hand, enveloped in her uncle's, and asked, once again, when her mommy and daddy would be home. He squeezed her hand, and, once again, gave her the answer she couldn't understand.

_Your mommy and daddy aren't coming back, pumpkin. _

Kathryn Shepard was six, and her world had changed forever.

* * *

Thane Krios was six, and he held his mother's hand while the hanar spoke to his father, ripples of light fluttering along its skin. Beside him was a bag holding all his favorite things. He'd helped his mother pack it this morning, pausing often to hug her, because she seemed so sad. Her fingers tightened on his, deep blue against his pale green, and he squeezed back, trying to reassure her. He was a big boy, now. He'd make them proud.

She knelt by him, taking him into her arms and murmuring for him to be good, to be strong, to be brave, that she would remember him, every day. Then it was his father's turn, his voice gruff and his shoulders tense with unhappiness. His father, too, crouched down beside him, the fingers of his father's left hand gripping his shoulder hard - too hard, but he was a big boy now, he wouldn't complain.

He picked up his bag and put it on his shoulder and walked over to where the hanar waited for him, one tentacle extended. Stopped, looked back, waved. He was a big boy now, and big boys didn't cry.

Thane Krios was six, and his world had changed forever.


	2. Lola

**Chapter One**

_**Lola**_

Katy Shepard was twenty-six, and sitting at the bar in her favorite dive at four in the afternoon.

She didn't look up when the door opened, letting in a brief flash of bright sunlight and two attractive men. The first was a behemoth; six-foot-four and built like a pro-wrestler. His near buzz-cut hinted at a military connection, confirmed by the faded Systems Alliance t-shirt stretched over his impressive torso and the oval dog tags that rested on his sternum. Two scars marred his masculine features; one cutting a v-shaped curve over his left cheekbone, and the other a thin line slashing through the right side of his lower lip. The stark design of a blackwork tattoo began on his neck just under his jaw and disappeared under the t-shirt.

His companion was shorter and leaner -though still tall and well-built- being broad through the shoulders and narrow in the waist and perhaps six foot tall. His hair was also short, but not short enough to scream jarhead, the way the other man's did, and a darker brown, nearly black. Though the connection was not as obvious, there was nevertheless something about his posture and the way he carried himself that spoke of military training.

The big man paused just inside the door to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and then moved steadily in the direction of the bar, sliding onto a barstool one removed from Shepard's.

"Hey, Lola," he said easily.

"James," she responded with the faintest hint of a smile. Her eyes raked over the big man's companion slowly, appraisingly. "Who's your friend?"

The other man held out a hand. "Kaidan Alenko," he offered.

She didn't take his hand. There was something of a challenge in her eyes as she gestured with her beer, instead. "Pull up a seat and have a drink, Alenko. Save the formality for someone who gives a crap."

Kaidan raised an eyebrow and let his hand fall to his side. Something about the challenge in the woman's eyes encouraged a response, so he let his own gaze return her slow appraisal.

He guessed that she'd be tall for a woman, all lean muscle and curves built for strength rather than seduction. Her hair was a deep red, currently held back in a ponytail that curled and tumbled down between her shoulderblades. Her eyes were light, although in the dimness of the bar, Kaidan couldn't be sure of their exact color. He _could_ tell that she had a spattering of freckles over her nose and cheekbones, however, and pretty features that would warrant a second look from any man with interests that ran to women. And as he took that second look, he noticed that, pretty though it was, her jaw was strong, and her left eyebrow was bisected by a scar. There was a definite air of danger about her, for all she lounged comfortably on her barstool.

Color him _interested_.

He gave the bartender his order as he settled himself on the stool on the other side of James and nodded his thanks when it arrived, handing over a credit chit for payment.

"What's the story, Lola?" James asked, after taking a long pull at his beer.

She shrugged. "Same shit," she said. "Different assholes."

James grinned. "Aw, hell, Lola," he said, "you're gonna make Alenko blush with all that filthy talk."

"Fuck him, then," she replied with an answering grin. "And fuck you, too, for good measure."

"_Any_time, _bonita,_" he told her with a very direct look.

Before she could answer, a loud female voice bellowed from the pool tables at the back of the dive. "Shepard! Get your fucking scrawny ass over here so I can kick it!"

A smile curled the corner of Shepard's mouth as she lifted her beer to her lips and shouted back, "Keep your fucking shirt on, Jack!" There was a pause as Shepard halted the movement of the bottle, and she added, almost as an afterthought, "Oh, wait, I forgot… _What_ shirt?"

"Fuuck yoou, Shepard."

Shepard laughed quietly and upended the beer, draining the remainder in one long swallow that had both men's eyes glued to her throat. She set the bottle down and gave it a little push with her fingertips, nodding to the bartender as she slid off her stool.

"James. Alenko." She cast one sultry look in their direction and moved off, not with the hip-swinging strut Kaidan expected, but with the smooth, powerful strides of a natural born ass-kicker. As he watched her leave, Kaidan couldn't help noticing James' eyes tracking her as well.

He turned back to the bar. "Lola, huh?" he asked.

James gave a twitch of his lips and one shoulder. "Ah… just a little nickname I have for her."

Kaidan met his friend's eyes. "So… you and she…?" He let the question hang in the air.

"Nah, man," James gave a shake of his head. "I _know_ when I'm outclassed."

"Oh," said Kaidan thoughtfully, and then more meaningfully, "Oh."

The big marine snorted. "I wouldn't try it, _amigo_. Lola is _serious_ business."

Kaidan turned around on his stool to watch the two women racking for nine ball at the pool table. "How serious?" he asked.

"She's practically a fucking hero in this neighborhood." James turned around on his stool too. His voice dropped so low Kaidan could barely hear it. "She's the leader of the Tenth Street Reds."

"She's what?" Kaidan choked on his beer and glanced once at James to see if the marine was shitting him, but the big man's face was serious. His eyes returned to the long, lean redhead, trying to fit his head around the information. "_That_ is the leader of the Reds?"

Shepard leaned over, pool cue in hand, preparing to break. Her pants - cargo fatigues, Kaidan noticed distractedly - clung to her ass in all the right ways.

"Would I lie?" James asked in mock indignation.

"Yes," Kaidan said promptly. "If you thought it would make a good story."

James rested his elbows on the bar top and leaned back against them. "Nah, I'm not shitting you this time, Boy Scout."

Shepard sent the cue ball shooting forward with a practiced motion - a hard, clean break that sunk one ball.

"Damn," commented Kaidan.

"You know it," agreed his friend.

They watched in silence as Shepard picked off two more balls before missing her attempt at the three.

"How the hell did someone like _that_ become the leader of a street gang?" Kaidan asked; rhetorically, he thought.

"By pulling off the _biggest_ _fucking coup _you can imagine," James replied.

"You know the story?" Kaidan was surprised.

"Yeah," said James, knocking back his beer. "I grew up here, remember?" He paused for a moment, the bottle dangling carelessly from his fingers. "Kept out of the whole scene, after I quit carrying for my dad and moved in with my uncle, but I heard enough."

Kaidan took a pull on his beer and squinted at the redhead. Her opponent had sunk a ball off the three and missed the four entirely, so Shepard was back up. Her fingers trailed lazily against the edge of the table as she stalked around it, trying to assess her shot.

"So?" he prompted, when the other man neglected to continue - likely appreciating the view, as Kaidan could see now that the woman called Jack wore about three straps of leather harness instead of a shirt. Every inch of exposed skin was inked, and her mouse-brown hair was mostly shaved, leaving only a long mohawk from forehead to crown, fastened in a ponytail. She was shorter than Shepard, and wiry, and instead of the frisson of danger Kaidan sensed about Shepard, she exuded raw anger.

She was also, he could tell even from this distance, a biotic.

"Hmmm?" He'd been right about James' distraction.

"You were saying?"

"Ah, yeah, sorry." James twisted slightly to put his empty bottle on the bar behind him and signal the bartender for another.

"Lola started running with the Reds when she was a kid. You know, hanging out around the edges, offering to carry and shit like that - anything to get an in, to get noticed."

"Looking like that, I'm surprised she _didn't_ get noticed," said Kaidan, the wry twist in his voice giving a certain context to his words.

James snagged the new bottle from the bar. "_Gracias_," he murmured, and returned to his lazy slouch. "Nah, man, it wasn't like that. Or not at first, anyway. She was just a kid; no curves, scabby knees, dirt. Probably picked her nose." He huffed a laugh. "Know I did, when I was that age."

Kaidan frowned. "How old are we talking?" he asked.

"Eleven, maybe," said the big marine. "Before she got Vido Santiago's attention, anyway. And from the stories, that happened when she was twelve or thirteen."

"Twelve or thirteen?" said Kaidan, turning to look at James in a mixture of horror and surprise. "That's not much better, James."

James shook his head. "You still got it wrong, Boy Scout. See, the story goes, she was helping unpack a shipment of red sand that had been smuggled in combustion manifolds. Bein' a kid still, she was good at it. Small fingers, you know?"

"Well, Vido was doing a lot of slave trafficking back then - rival gang members, folks that couldn't pay for their shit anymore, that kind of thing. Gang members that had pissed him off one time too many."

"What an asshole."

"Yeah." James took a swig of beer. "And Vido's contact was this batarian scumbag - you know, one of the deviant bastards that keeps slaves around for kinky shit, not just for status? And the batarian saw Lola working nearby when he came to pick up a shipment from Vido, and he tells Vido he wants her thrown in to the lot."

Kaidan grunted sourly. "What did he say?"

"Well, Vido was surprised, and calls Lola over. To him, she was just one of the fucking kids underfoot."

"No curves, scabby knees, snotty nose?"

"Pretty much. She comes over, and the batarian grabs her chin, you know, so he can get a good look at her face, and he tells Vido something about how _good_ she'd look all spread open in front of him."

"Ugh. That's…"

"I know, _amigo_. Kid or not, that shit didn't fly with Lola, either. She knocks his hand away, calls the four-eyed bastard a cocksucker and tells him to go fuck himself. And when the batarian goes to hit her, she grabs his nuts, hard, and gives 'em a twist, and he loses two octaves in his voice and falls to his knees. And Lola just walks back over and gets back to work unpacking sand."

Kaidan blinked in silence for a moment, then said, "And she was _twelve_?"

James gave a lopsided shrug. "Or thirteen."

"Damn."

"Yeah."

"What did Santiago do?"

"What do you think, _amigo_? He laughed his ass off. Started calling her his little _zorra_, his little vixen."

"Even without the curves and with the snot and dirt and scabby knees?"

"Yeah, man. He didn't mean it in a _sexy_ way, you know? Not then, anyway."

Kaidan nodded and finished his beer. The bartender gave him a second without prompting. "You say not then. That means things changed."

James studied the distant redhead for a moment. "Yeah," he said. "They did."

"When?"

The marine dropped his gaze to the beer bottle in his hand. "She was sixteen," he said. "Maybe not quite all grown up, but enough that Lola turned heads. And she had her sights set on Vido's bed."

"Social climber, huh?" There was a hint of bitterness in the statement.

James shook his head. "Nah. She didn't climb nothin'. She went straight for the top. Wouldn't let no one touch her but Vido. Lola had _plans_."

"Plans?"

James nodded. "Oh, yeah. Gave Vido her virginity to get into his bed, kept fucking him to get close to him. Everybody thought she had her eye on replacing his lieutenant, Finch, but that was never her game. Played it smart, too - kept the Reds out of her plans, except for this little crippled kid she'd picked up as a pilot."

"Crippled? What happened to him?" Kaidan asked.

"Dunno, man. Something genetic, I think. Kid supposedly went through Alliance Flight Academy and wiped everyone's asses - broke every record, outpiloted even the instructors - but when he graduated, the brass grounded him on account of his physical condition. Said he couldn't move fast enough in an emergency, if the order to abandon ship was given."

"That's hard. Why'd they let him go through the Academy, then?"

James shrugged. "Ah, who knows, man. It's the fucking brass."

"Yeah, I guess." Kaidan stared at Shepard. The game was nearly over - she was calling her shot for the left corner pocket, and the supple curve of her hip and ass were in three-quarters profile to him. He swallowed roughly, and asked, mostly to take his mind off the mesmerizing view, "So what _was_ her game?"

James looked at him in surprise. "You mean you can't guess?" he said in disbelief. He snorted mirthlessly.

"Lola wanted to kill the bastard."

* * *

"You cheated!"

The little biotic poked a finger at Shepard's chest, her nose just a few inches from Shepard's chin.

Shepard grinned. "Like the way you warped the seven ball as I was taking my shot?"

"I just slipped a little, okay? It happens to biotics, sometimes," Jack muttered defensively.

"Bullshit, Jack. It might happen to other biotics, but I _know_ you. You have better control than any biotic I've ever seen," Shepard replied, beginning to retrieve the billiard balls from various pockets.

"Yeah, well… don't think that means I'll go easy on you if you cheat me again," Jack threatened.

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Should we ask James and his friend if they want a game?" she suggested. "Maybe talk them into a friendly little wager?"

Jack barked a laugh. "I like how you think, Shepard," she said. "Besides, the little one's been staring at your ass this whole time. He'll be distracted."

It was Shepard's turn to laugh. "I like how you think, Jack," she repeated back to the biotic.

"James!" Shepard called over to the bar. "Why don't you and your friend join us for a game?"

The big marine grinned at her. "I don't know, Lola. You think you can handle us?"

"I don't _think_, James. I _know_."

James glanced at his friend Alenko, who nodded, and slid off his barstool.

"And bring me another beer, while you're at it," Shepard added.

"That's _bring me another beer,_ por favor," James corrected, signaling the bartender.

"Yeah. Bite me, James," replied Shepard. "_Por favor_."

"Is that an invitation?" asked the marine, as he sauntered up to the redhead, looming over her.

Shepard folded her arms on her chest and rested her weight on one hip, raising an eyebrow at James enquiringly. Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

"Would you take me up on it if it were?" she countered.

"She's got you there, James," said Alenko, moving past them to examine the pool cues. "You're all talk."

James pressed the fresh beer into Shepard's hand. "Some wingman he is," he muttered.

"Maybe he thinks _you're_ the wingman," Shepard suggested, letting the cold, crisp liquid flow over her tongue and down her throat.

"How can I be a wingman, looking like this?" James asked, holding his hands out to either side of his body. "It's an unfair advantage, Lola."

"Maybe you've got a little dick?" suggested Jack. "Word like that gets around, you know."

"You wound me, Loco. To the heart," James shot back, laying one beefy hand over his chest.

"Loco?" wondered Alenko, raising an eyebrow.

"That's _Miss-Fucking-Nought_ to you, asshole," snapped the biotic, baring her teeth.

"You got it," Alenko said, holding up both hands in a placating gesture.

"_Jack_," said Shepard, a warning note in her voice. The two women glared briefly at each other, and then Jack looked away, muttering under her breath. Shepard ignored her and began racking for eight-ball.

"So, are you boys going to make this interesting, or are you a couple of pussies?" the biotic asked, teeth flashing again. "A hundred credits, best three of five."

"Holy hell, Loco," retorted James. "You must have us confused with someone in a higher pay grade."

"Pussy."

Shepard withdrew the rack with a flourish and fixed her eyes on Alenko. The corner of her mouth curled up, and she leaned her hip against the table lazily. "How about we don't play for credits, then?" she asked. "Losing team pays a forfeit."

"Ay, _mi dios_!" muttered James. He looked at his companion. "Your call, Boy Scout."

Alenko laughed nervously, but to his credit, he didn't look away from Shepard's stare. "Well, ah… I suppose that depends on the forfeit," he managed.

"Why?" Shepard quirked an eyebrow at him, her lopsided little smile curving further. "What forfeit are you planning on asking for?"

Alenko's gaze was level, but he had some difficulty keeping his voice light. "I don't know… say, dinner? I could go for a nice steak sandwich…"

"Speak for yourself, _amigo_," said James. "All my equipment cleaned," he declared. "Every piece of armor, every gun. Even my boots."

Jack sneered. "Forget it. I'm not polishing your knob, fucker."

James huffed in exasperation. "I meant it _literally_, Loco. _Just_ my equipment, not my anatomy." The big marine grinned. "Unless, you know, you can't keep your hands off this," he joked, indicating his powerful build.

"In your dreams," scoffed Jack, rolling her heavily kohled eyes in return.

"That sounds fair," Shepard nodded, breaking eye contact and turning to the table. Her smile widened as she set the cue ball in place. "And just to be nice, we'll even give you the break."

"Aw, shit," murmured James in sudden trepidation. "I've got a baad feeling about this."

* * *

Kaidan and James were down two games to one, and Shepard had just excused herself to the restroom.

"You didn't tell me she was a pool shark, Vega," Kaidan groused, wiping his forehead. It seemed every time he needed to concentrate on making a difficult shot, Shepard was there, in his periphery, leaning on a barstool in some innocent-seeming pose that nonetheless displayed her attributes to fine advantage.

The marine shrugged. "_Serious_ _business_, amigo. I warned you."

"Damn. We're getting our asses _kicked_."

"Yes you are," purred the woman called Jack, bringing her face close to his and subjecting him to a mad leer before stalking away. This close to her, the electric tingle of her biotics was impossible to ignore -another inadvertent _'side effect'_ of the old L2 ports- lighting up every last nerve in his body.

Kaidan shook his head and finished his last beer, setting it on an empty stool and trying to relax. "You know," he pointed out, "you never finished your story earlier."

"What story?" demanded Jack, perching herself on a stool and tapping the butt end of her pool cue against the bottom rung.

James shrugged again. "He wanted to know how Lola became leader of the Reds."

Jack snorted. "That? Well, fuck, Sunshine… whaddya think? She killed some people."

"I got that part," Kaidan replied dryly. "He was telling me how it went down."

"How?" The biotic's eyebrows rose in surprise. "She fucking played Vido Santiago off against his fucking enforcer, that's how. And she was fucking smart enough to look around for someone who wanted the fucker dead as much as she did, and then hire his ass to help her do it."

Kaidan felt the shock down to his knees. "She hired an _assassin_ to take Santiago down?"

"Did I fucking say that?" Jack growled. "Massani's no fucking assassin, but he sure as fuck wanted to kill Vido. Something about getting shot in the face does that to people. Shepard told him if he helped her secure the Reds' base and take out Vido's support, she'd deliver Vido to him personally."

"_Massani_…" murmured Kaidan, as his brow wrinkled with the effort of recollection. "Why does that name sound familiar to me?"

James snorted. "Used to be Alliance, way back in the day. Mostly people know him as a bounty hunter. Rumor has it, even the Council's used his services."

"Yeah, the old man's supposed to have been some sort of hot shit," Jack conceded.

"He _must_ be," Shepard had returned without them noticing, and now she gave Jack a wicked little smirk. "_You_ fucked him."

"Oh, fuck you, Shepard. Like you didn't."

Shepard raised her eyebrows slightly. "Did I?"

"Come on, Shepard!" Jack laughed. "You should _hear_ him go on about your tits. He's fucking _poetic_."

Shepard shrugged. "I've heard you wax lyrical about my tits, too, Jack."

Jack frowned. "What?" she said defensively. "You've got a nice rack."

Shepard smiled. "Thanks. But for the record, I haven't slept with you."

The frown deepened. "Doesn't mean I haven't seen your tits."

"Exactly." Shepard sounded smug.

"Shit. I _hate_ it when you do that."


	3. Spectre

**Chapter Two**

_**Spectre**_

Thane Krios was twenty-nine, and about to complete his most recent assignment.

It was not often that he was engaged in outside work, though such jobs were generally quite lucrative. And it was even more rare for him to pick up work as a sub-contractor, as he was now. But when his services were not needed for more than a few months - as had occasionally happened in the past - the Illuminated Primacy sought to find other ways to keep him… active. They understood that, like any other tool, his edge would become blunted by prolonged disuse.

He moved high above the streets, on rooftops and in what shadows he could find in this bright city on this bright world. Shadows were plentiful down below, but he did not want to risk discovery. At this age, he had far too much experience to underestimate his quarry.

His target stood out from the others on this world by virtue of his species, but in truth, he would stand out regardless - few others in this galaxy possessed his intensity, palpable even from this distance. Tracking him was therefore easy, but care needed to be taken in setting up the kill shot - Thane did not believe in collateral damage, and his reputation was built on his ability to bring down his target - and _only_ his target - regardless of the circumstances.

As his form slipped noiselessly over the rooftops, he voiced the same prayer he always offered for the hunt.

_Amonkira, Lord of Hunters, grant that my hands be steady, my aim be true, and my feet swift. _

_And, should the worst come to pass, grant me forgiveness…_

* * *

Garrus Vakarian looked down at a map of the city displayed on his omni-tool, and glanced up at his partner.

_Partner_.

It was a heady word, _partner_, even if it wasn't technically correct. Nihlus Kryik was a Spectre, a member of the elite Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Council government, and Spectres generally worked alone. But for the next several months Garrus and Nihlus would be working together, while Kryik evaluated Garrus for Spectre status.

_Spectre status_.

Finally. It had been a long time in coming. Garrus had been one of a thousand other turian military recruits to be tapped for further training as Spectre candidates. His father, a famous detective for the Council's Citadel Security Force, had been livid. His father _hated_ Spectres, hated their privilege and above-the-law status. To Garrus's father, _no one_ was above the law.

The resulting fight between Garrus and his father wasn't their first, but it had been their last. In bitter disappointment, Garrus's father had cut all ties with his son.

Garrus had continued with the training, and each time the list was shortened, the name _Garrus Vakarian_ remained on it, generally somewhere near the top. And now…

"We should move on to the rendezvous point," said Nihlus, his mandibles pulling inward. "My contact should be arriving shortly."

The two turians strode along the dockside of the human city, catching all kinds of glances. Some open, some surreptitious; a few friendly, many more hostile. The majority were surprised, or perhaps puzzled. Garrus figured it wasn't often that they saw turians here on Earth. After all, it was a levo world, and there was that whole business with the Relay 314 Incident…

"You'd think the humans would keep their cities cleaner," he commented, as they stepped around an overflowing trash bin.

Nihlus shrugged. "This is not an affluent area," he explained. "Humans have a fairly significant class divide between the wealthy and the poor."

Garrus looked around. "It seems they could learn something from the other Council races."

"Indeed," Nihlus nodded. "As we can from them."

Garrus felt his mandibles flutter skeptically. "You really think we can learn from the humans?" he asked.

"Undoubtedly," said Nihlus. "Humans have proven to be a remarkably innovative and adaptable race. In the past few centuries, the Hierarchy has become stagnant, much like the Council itself. The humans have shaken things up."

"You actually _like_ the humans?" Garrus was surprised.

The older turian's subvocals were amused. "While I may frequently deplore their attitudes, I've come to respect their ingenuity and drive. Like them or not, we _need_ the humans."

Garrus fell silent for a moment while he digested this information. "Your contact is human, right?"

"Yes," Nihlus responded. "From the Systems Alliance. His name is Kahoku, and while he neglected to give his rank, some digging revealed that he's an admiral of the fleet."

"How would a Systems Alliance admiral know a rogue Council Spectre?"

Nihlus smiled. "He doesn't. But he does know a little something about a rogue Alliance black ops group known as Cerberus."

Garrus grinned as well. "Find Cerberus, find Saren…"

"Precisely."

* * *

Nihlus Kryik glanced at the Spectre candidate next to him and wondered if this was how Saren had felt a little over a decade ago when he'd had a much younger, brasher Kryik in tow.

_Was I _ever_ that young? Spirits, was I ever that _idealistic_?_

Being a Spectre changed you, there was no doubt about it. You saw things, did things, that ate your soul away bit by bit. What remained as a result was something like a glacier - cold and ancient and completely implacable.

The difference was all the more marked because Vakarian reminded Nihlus so strongly of himself in so many ways. The brash hot-headedness, the questioning mind, the reluctance to stand by traditional tactics when a potentially better way presented itself… All characteristics Saren Arterius had molded into one of the most respected operatives in Special Tactics and Reconnaissance.

_Saren._

He'd been trying not to think on it too hard or too much. Trying not to wonder how or why, or if there'd been some sign he should have seen, and especially trying not to dwell on the endpoint of this assignment.

_You are hereby authorized to use any force necessary to bring Arterius to justice…_

_Any force necessary._

Nihlus wondered for the thousandth time why _he'd_ been given this assignment, considering his known friendship with the rogue Spectre. On the face of it, it could be argued that it was just an extension of his original assignment to retrieve the artifact, but his ties with Saren went deep. Could it be that they gave the job to him because they _wanted_ someone who would put forth every effort to bring Saren in alive? He wouldn't put it past Tevos or Valern, though for vastly different reasons. Valern would want Saren interrogated thoroughly; to pick apart the former Spectre in some quiet STG facility somewhere. Tevos, of course, was the consummate PR artist. She'd want Saren alive to make a show of prosecuting him.

Sparatus was the only Councilor Nihlus suspected would prefer Saren dead. Killed quickly and quietly and neatly tidied away. Turians didn't like embarrassments. Especially embarrassments that undermined Sparatus's own efforts to slow humanity's rocketing ascent in galactic politics.

Nihlus shelved his thoughts with effort. Analysis could wait. Now, he had to focus.

Kahoku claimed to have some kind of solid lead on a Cerberus base in the desert east of here. The human had been hounding the black ops group tirelessly for months now - not for the reason Saren -and now Nihlus- were, but for some unspecified reason Nihlus suspected might have to do with one of Kahoku's elite scout platoons going missing six standard months ago. And Kahoku's most recent intel came in part from the Shadow Broker, giving all the more credence to his claim.

The admiral had arranged to meet them at a low-end drinking establishment in this neighborhood near the docks. He'd said he'd chosen it because there was a turian mechanic and his bondmate living nearby who frequented the place, and therefore the presence of two turians in the area would hopefully be less likely to cause comment.

Nihlus had refrained from saying that an older mated pair was hardly the same as two male soldiers. Humans really were terribly self-absorbed at times, and it was entirely possible that two turians were just two turians to the majority of them. There did seem to be less hostility in the human faces the closer they got to the rendezvous point, and one elderly human even called out to them, asking them to convey his greetings to someone named Lee.

"Who's Lee?" Vakarian murmured to him with a nervous flick of his mandibles.

Nihlus shrugged. "There is a turian mated pair living here. My guess is that Lee is one of them."

Vakarian frowned. "_Lee_ doesn't sound like a turian name to me."

Nihlus chuckled. "Probably a humanized version. You should hear the way they pronounce some of the hanar names."

Vakarian's mandibles drooped. "I thought they did that on purpose, to annoy the jellies…"

The chuckle became a laugh. "Maybe some do. But most are actually sincere in their attempts."

"_Spirits…_"

Nihlus could see their destination up ahead on the left. And outside, leaning against the wall with a hat of some kind pulled down to obscure his face, was his contact.

"Look sharp, Vakarian," he muttered under his breath. "We're here. That's Kahoku - to the left of the door."

Kahoku must have seen them, even with his hat so low it nearly covered his eyes, because he pushed off from the wall and took a few steps in their direction. As he did so, the door opened, disgorging three humans - two males and a female - from the interior of the lounge. One of the males was large, and wore the emblem of the Systems Alliance on his clothing, but neither he or the other male did more than give them a casual glance. The female, however, immediately scanned the area upon exiting, and Nihlus saw her eyes narrow slightly when they passed over him, though they did not linger.

He was just about to greet Kahoku when he heard a shout and felt a sharp blow to his side. He instinctively twisted as he fell, reaching for his pistol, only to look up into the female human's face. It was she who had struck him, catching him with her shoulder and bearing him to the ground.

She didn't bother to try to pin him, nor did she even appear to register him any longer as she, too, twisted, rolling to her feet and roughly pushing Vakarian aside, ignoring the Carnifex in the younger turian's grasp. Her hand had dropped to her ankle as she gathered herself to stand, and as she rose, Nihlus saw the flash of a… _Spirits!_ Was that one of the new Phalanx compact heavy pistols in her hand?

The female's other hand was already at her ear, triggering an embedded comm receiver.

"Massani, Hutch! Sniper on the old Spreckles building. Try to pin him down. I'm going after the bastard!"

_Sniper?_

"Wait, miss!" he tried, but the female was already sprinting away, leaving one of the males swearing and lumbering after her and the other - a biotic - flashing a barrier into life around the Spectre and his candidate. Kahoku was already gone, probably having taken to his heels the moment the female shouted.

_Spirits_. As if he needed any further reason to _hate_ this assignment…

* * *

Thane Krios stared through the rifle scope in astonishment as his target was carried sideways by the impact of a slender human female. His target's companion moved in quickly, further muddying his shot, and Thane found himself checking an exclamation of disgust, easing his finger on the trigger. How had the female known he was here? He used no targeting laser - only a fool would allow a Spectre like Kryik to realize he was a target.

As he watched, the other turian was shoved roughly to the left, but only because the human female was rising to her feet, her body still blocking his shot on Kryik. A compact heavy pistol was now in her right hand, and there was murder in her eyes.

Thane felt his breath catch in his throat.

_Amonkira, those _eyes_!_

They bore into his; a restless, speckled green, like the waters of Kahje. Fierce. _Furious_. He knew it was just a trick of the scope, that a human could barely see his silhouette from this distance, let alone meet his eyes. Her hair, lit by the slanting rays of the setting sun, seemed to halo her head like flames.

Her lips moved. He was not adept at reading human language at a distance, but one word he recognized.

_Sniper._

He knew he needed to leave, but it wasn't until the woman entered the lee of the building he perched on that he found himself able to take his eye from the scope.

As he moved to replace the rifle on his back, the chatter of assault-weapon fire reached his ears, rounds peppering the area around him.

_It appears I have overstayed my welcome…_

Thane rolled to a new patch of cover behind some heavy ductwork and crept along it, looking for a point of weakness. More assault-rifle fire, from another angle, caused him to drop flat to the roof.

_Hmmm. Unexpected._

He waited for a break in the fire pattern, and rose up, sending a heavy throw field in the direction of the gunman on his flank. Not bothering to see if it caught a target -he _was_ skilled, after all- he vaulted the ductwork and sprinted for a more protected position.

A moment later, the woman burst onto the roof, pistol sweeping the area, which was empty.

"Massani! Eyes!" she growled, obviously into an open comm channel.

Her footsteps were slow, precise; one foot crossing in front of the other as she turned a small circle to view the entire roof.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" she ground out. "It's an open rooftop, for god's sake. Is he cloaked?"

The woman moved off - clearly making a perimeter sweep. "Hutch? You okay?"

_No armor. Interesting._

Movements measured, deliberate. Stalking him.

A glimmer, a flash, and she was gone.

_Ah. No wonder she asked about a cloak…_

Thane was ready for her when she uncloaked, already moving to disarm and disable her. She reacted quickly, but not quickly enough; Thane sent the pistol - a Phalanx, new, top of the line - spinning away with a kick, but she managed to block his attempt to grab her, and even got off a weak kick to the inside of his knee.

"A little help, Massani!" she muttered into the comm.

Thane was close enough to hear the raspy response.

"You're in the guddamn way, Shepard!"

"I don't care! Shoot him already!"

_I believe that would be my cue to leave. Quickly…_

Thane slipped behind the woman, catching the backhanded jab she snapped at him and shoving her roughly, causing her to stumble forward, then spun around the corner and through the open roof doorway.

* * *

When Shepard caught her balance and turned to look for him, the sniper was gone.


	4. Saren

**Chapter Three**

_**Saren**_

_Citadel Tower  
Two weeks prior_

"I find it telling that whenever baseless accusations are made against me, humanity is always behind them."

The holovid of Spectre Saren Arterius folded its arms on its chest and glared down at the human ambassador to the Citadel, Donnel Udina.

"Not _baseless_," snapped Udina with some heat. "We have proof that you were behind the explosions on Eden Prime, and that you were working with the Geth!"

The Spectre shifted his weight, dropping his arms in disgust. "Geth? The geth haven't been seen past the Perseus Veil in three hundred years." He turned to look at the assembled Council. "Must I listen to these… fabrications, Councilors?"

"I agree with the Spectre," said the turian councilor, Sparatus. He didn't much care for Donnel Udina. The man had all the charm of a rabid vorcha. "What proof is there to back up the humans' claim that Saren was involved?"

"You want proof?" Udina thundered, glancing over his shoulder to a timid-looking human female. "_Here__'s_ your proof. Specialist Traynor?"

The woman stepped forward nervously. She was wearing Alliance dress blues, and her dark hair had been fashioned into a chignon at the nape of her neck. She dipped her head to the Council, her eyes skittering sideways to the holo and then down to her omni-tool.

"Specialist Traynor is a communications officer for the Alliance," explained Udina. "She has proof that Saren had geth soldiers set explosives around the Eden Prime spaceport and an… archaeological dig… nearby."

Traynor cleared her throat. "Councilors," she said in a pleasantly accented voice. "This is a communication we received from Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of the 212th marine brigade of the 2nd Frontier Division stationed on Eden Prime."

There was a brief flare of static, followed by the unmistakable sound of assault weapons fire.

"I repeat, this is Gunnery Chief Williams of the two-one-two. My unit's been pinned down. We're taking heavy fire. Requesting… ah! Requesting back up from the two-one-three. There's human soldiers - a commando unit, I think…" Williams' was panting, and there was the clack of armor hitting something solid, "…and synthetics, too. I think they're _geth_." There was disbelief in her voice, and she paused to swallow. "Oh, god. They came out of nowhere. There aren't many of us left. I've circled around… trying to get to the spaceport. They're after…" Another pause, this one filled with gunfire. Williams was returning fire. "They're after the artifact."

"This proves nothing," Saren scoffed. "Only that there were humans and synthetics, _if_ the transmission is even legitimate."

"Wait," said Udina. "There's more."

There was the sound of running; booted feet thudding into the dirt. "Crap," muttered the marine. It wasn't clear whether she realized her comm was still open or not. "This place is swarming with synthetics. I'll have to… yeah, there." A metallic thump, and the sounds of someone in heavy boots trying to move quietly along metal decking. "Shit. Powell? What the hell are you doing here? Nevermind. Stay right here. Don't move, and for god's sake, keep your head down!"

Another voice, faint, male - evidently the person the marine had just addressed. "What's going on? There's some turian and a bunch of robots, and they've been shooting the place up! They got Jon and Becca and old man Rudzinski!"

"Turian? Where?"

"Over by the tramway. Wait! Where the hell are you going?"

"Stay here, Powell. I've called for backup. Just sit tight, all right?"

"Easy for you to say. You've got a fucking rifle."

There was another sound - the sound of a sidearm being unholstered. "Here. Only use it if they find you."

More noise - softer scraping sounds of armor against metal, faint clinks. Williams was clearly trying to keep quiet as she moved closer to the tramway. Her breath puffed in the comm.

The next voice was deep and commanding, with the dual-toned flanging of a turian.

"Set the charges. Destroy the entire colony. Leave no evidence that we were here."

The asari councilor, Tevos, made a soft gasping noise. The other two councilors shifted in surprise.

The voice was Saren's.

* * *

The salarian councilor, Valern, was the first to recover himself.

"Where, might I ask, is this Chief Williams currently? Why isn't she here to testify directly?"

Specialist Traynor ducked her head. Udina lifted his, and stared down the salarian. "Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams was killed in the line of duty, attempting to disarm the explosive charges set by Saren Arterius. Her efforts, combined with her warning to evacuate the colonists closest to the spaceport, are the sole reason the casualties were not _catastrophically_ high."

The salarian paused, and blinked slowly. "I… see," he said thoughtfully. "Would you…"

Udina held up a hand. "We have withheld Williams' body from her family, in the event you would like to examine it for evidence," he said heavily.

"Spectre Arterius?" demanded Tevos, "Would you care to explain what we just heard?"

"I would like to request a private session with the Council. There are… extenuating circumstances." Saren appeared unmoved by the evidence against him.

"No!" thundered Udina. "If he has anything to say, he can say it now!"

If anything, the Spectre's expression of disdain deepened. "The information I have to impart is sensitive," he growled. "Not something for your ears, human."

"I object," Udina complained. "First he attacks our colony, and now he wants to hide behind the Council! I demand this be heard!"

"I agree with the human ambassador," Valern said stiffly. "What is it that you believe _excuses_ an attempt to murder innocent colonists?"

Saren glared at Udina. "Very well," he said shortly. "I have every reason to believe that the humans," the word was twisted with distaste, "were attempting to hide prothean technology from the Council. A working prothean beacon."

If Saren had expected shock and outrage, he was disappointed. The Councilors exchanged a glance between them.

"Is there some reason for your accusation?" Tevos asked.

"I know the beacon exists, and that it was uncovered at the archaeological dig on Eden Prime," Saren began.

"Not the existence of the beacon," interjected Valern. "That is not in question. Why did you believe the humans were attempting to hide the beacon from the Council?"

Saren's composure began to crack. "A working prothean beacon is a matter of galactic importance. Had they intended to share it with the other Council races, they would have announced their find. Instead, they kept it secret, and surrounded the dig site with soldiers."

"Did it occur to you to check with the Council before you decided on a course of wholesale destruction?" Sparatus was clearly incensed, his sub-harmonics dripping with contempt. "In fact, the humans were acting on Council orders to keep the artifact secure until it could be picked up and transported to the Citadel. Spectre Nihlus Kryik was on his way to Eden Prime to retrieve it when the colony's communications were cut by the explosions."

"Nihlus?" breathed the Spectre with surprise.

"Saren Arterius," Tevos intoned formally. "You are hereby ordered to return to the Citadel and surrender yourself to our authority pending further investigation into this matter." Again the three Councilors exchanged glances, rife with subtle wordless communication. "Your Spectre status is suspended until a full hearing can be arranged."

"Councilors…"

"You have one week, Arterius," said Valern.

"Do not keep us waiting," added Sparatus.

Saren stared down at the Council for a long minute, his face unreadable. Then he bowed his head formally.

"Council."

The holo flickered into nothingness.

* * *

Saren was absolutely still and silent for a full minute after disconnecting from the Council. Then a deep rumbling began in the bottom of his chest, building in volume and intensity until it broke free as a roar that echoed off the bulkheads. He tore madly around the room, claws swinging, desperate to destroy something.

_Humans!_

Angry bile filled his throat, and he roared again, physically pulling a chair from the decking, bolts and all.

_Spirits, how he hated humans._

His rampage was brought up short by a soft cough behind him. He whirled around, bearing down on the serene face of an asari matriarch. His strong fingers bit into her cheeks and jaw as he grabbed her, the tips of his talons dimpling her pliable flesh.

"What?" he snarled, his voice almost rendered unintelligible.

"What did the Council say?" the asari asked calmly.

Saren relaxed his grip slowly, gliding his hand down her throat and over her collarbone in a mockery of a caress. "They've suspend my Spectre status," he said, controlling his voice with an effort. "Blind fools."

"Do they know about the Illusive Man's involvement?"

"It's possible," he admitted, pushing away slightly and turning his back on her. "Although they may also believe the beacon to have been destroyed in the explosions."

The matriarch regarded him silently for a moment. "How shall we proceed?" she inquired.

Saren growled and jerked his head sharply. "This changes nothing. The beacon is our first priority."

"Understood." The asari nodded once and turned to leave his presence. She'd reached the bulkhead when Saren stopped her with a word.

"Benezia…"

The asari stopped, and twisted slightly to look over her shoulder at him. "Yes, Saren?"

He ground his teeth together, hands clenching and unclenching. "The Council has involved Nihlus," he said quietly. He turned suddenly to face Benezia, his eyes intent. "He cannot be allowed to become a problem."

"Indeed." She waited patiently for further instruction. After a long moment, it came.

_I__'m sorry, old friend._

"Get me my contact in the Primacy."


	5. Brokers

**Chapter Four**

_**Brokers**_

Dr. Liara T'soni carefully closed and locked the door behind her administrative assistant. Though she scanned her offices every morning for surveillance equipment, she performed another check using some upgraded scanning software she'd acquired earlier in the day.

There was nothing.

As satisfied as she could be that her office was secure, the petite asari in her perfect suit settled herself behind her desk and sent a very heavily encrypted request over the public comm network. While she waited for a response, she browsed idly through an archeology zine, the study of ancient artifacts being something of a hobby for her.

After the passage of about an hour, she was pinged on her secure terminal - _not_ the terminal she used for her legal clients, though that, too, was secured, but the one she used for her _other_ clients. The ones who paid handsomely for her information rather than her legal acumen.

She opened the vidcomm and smiled at the image that blinked to life in front of her.

"Shepard," she said warmly. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, Liara," Shepard answered, a brief smile appearing on her face before being eclipsed by a frown. "What's up? You don't usually have me contact you on this channel."

"I'm afraid I have a rather large favor to ask you, Shepard," Liara said, the faintest hint of a worry line creasing her flawless forehead.

Only the twitch of an eyebrow belied Shepard's surprise. "I'm sure I owe you more than one," Shepard replied. "Shoot."

Instead of answering, Liara rose from her desk and walked toward the expansive pane of glass that served as one wall of her office. "There is a young lady on her way to you," Liara said slowly. "A quarian. I need you to keep her safe for me."

"Quarian?" Shepard's surprise was tinged with curiosity. "Why would you need to protect a quarian?"

Liara glanced once over her shoulder. Shepard was watching her closely, the human's vibrant red hair tousled in untidy curls over her shoulders. There was a marked crease in the hair around ear-level from the elastic band Shepard usually used to confine her messy locks. She was wearing only a tank top and a pair of panties - clearly she'd been preparing for bed when she received Liara's request.

Once again, Liara was struck by the sheer attractiveness of her friend and client. It was something more than physical beauty, though Shepard was definitely considered pretty by human and asari standards. There was just so much life in her, like a bright, burning flame she carried within.

She turned away again, ruthlessly squashing those feelings. They'd been over it before, and Shepard was not interested in complicating their relationship with anything physical. Liara took a deep breath and refocused her exceptionally sharp mind.

"You know about my… issues… with the Shadow Broker," she said carefully, keeping her voice as neutral as possible even as the old anger and regret filled her.

_Oh, Feron, my friend. I _will_ find the Shadow Broker and make him pay for taking you from me_.

Shepard's frown deepened. "Yes."

"There is… a situation brewing, Shepard," Liara went on, turning back to face her desk and the vidcomm. "I don't know how well you've been keeping up with gossip coming out of the Citadel…"

Shepard interrupted her. "Is this about the rogue Spectre?" she asked, one hand reaching up to run through her tangled hair.

Liara gave a tiny nod. "You_ have_ been paying attention."

"No," Shepard gave a laugh. "At least, not to gossip. Remind me to tell you about my day when you're finished."

The asari paced evenly back to the desk and re-seated herself, resting her forearms on the desk and lacing her fingers together.

"The Spectre in question is Saren Arterius, in the event that you were unaware of his identity. He was supposed to turn himself over to the Council a standard week ago. He did not. He is accused of being behind the destruction on Eden Prime and of working with the geth."

"Geth?" Shepard said with great surprise. "The synthetics?"

"Yes," Liara responded. "The race of AIs created by the quarians over three hundred years ago."

"Ahhh. I see. Saren-geth-quarian," Shepard guessed shrewdly.

Liara dipped her head. "It is… more complicated than that, but broadly speaking, that _is_ the connection."

It was Shepard's turn to nod. "Got it. Go ahead. I'll stop interrupting."

"A few days ago, a young quarian showed up on the Citadel in great agitation, demanding to talk to the Council. As you can expect, she was denied." The asari unlaced her fingers and folded her hands one on top the other, leaning forward slightly.

"I received word through my contacts that a short time later, a quarian matching the same description was seen in a medical clinic in Tayseri ward, being treated for a gunshot wound. Further, this quarian asked the doctor if she knew any way to get in contact with the Shadow Broker."

Shepard groaned and put her hand over her eyes. "Just how young_ is_ this quarian?" she began, and then waved her own question away. "Never mind. I said I wouldn't interrupt any more, didn't I?"

Liara smiled. "Yes, you did, but I don't mind. The quarian is on her Pilgrimage, so I would assume she is somewhere between seventeen and twenty-four years of age."

"What's a Pil…" Shepard stopped abruptly. "No. Just continue, please. I'll save my questions for the end."

"So you've said," Liara teased gently. "The doctor put the girl in touch with a local criminal with ties to the Shadow Broker. I've had my eye on Fist for a while - he's ruthless, but not particularly bright, and I had hoped to make use of him at some point." She frowned. "That will no longer be possible, unfortunately."

She took a deep breath. "Fist offered the quarian a deal - safety for information on Saren, the geth, and some prothean artifact she claimed to have knowledge of. She accepted, not knowing that Fist had made another deal - with Saren."

"Wait. This guy _double-crossed_ the Shadow Broker?"

"_Shepard_. You're terrible at keeping your questions to yourself. You do realize this is why my bills are always higher than you expect, don't you?"

Shepard clapped both hands over her mouth and made a mumbling sound of apology. Liara laughed.

"But to answer your question, yes, Fist double-crossed the Shadow Broker. I knew he wasn't bright, but I did credit him with a stronger sense of self-preservation. As you can imagine, the Shadow Broker is not pleased. He has hired a krogan battlemaster to express his rather terminal displeasure with Fist."

Shepard made another squeaking sound from behind her hands. Liara's large blue eyes twinkled merrily for a moment, despite the seriousness of the conversation.

"Fortunately for the quarian, I was able to intercept her before Fist's thugs. I have agreed to a slightly more generous offer than what she was expecting from the Shadow Broker. But Fist is still after her, and although I expect that problem to sort itself out in a hurry, I imagine that Saren will continue to pursue her. As will the Shadow Broker."

The asari sighed. "As her information has to do with the destruction of a human colony, I felt that the quarian would be ultimately safer among humans. I have a trusted associate transporting her to Earth as we speak. But you, Shepard, are my ace in the ground, if you would consent to do this for me."

Slowly, Shepard took her hands away from her mouth to reveal a grin. "Liara?" she said patiently. "You know that I value you greatly, both as a friend and as a lawyer?"

"Yes, Shepard," replied Liara, confusion crinkling the corners of her eyes. "As I value _you_ as a friend and a client."

"You know I have the utmost respect for your intelligence, drive, and professionalism…"

Liara's face fell. "You won't do it, will you?"

"Oh, no. It isn't that. I'm more than happy to keep your quarian safe. It's just…" she trailed off.

"What is it, then?" The crinkles deepened.

"Your idioms still need practice," Shepard grinned. "It's _ace in the hole_, not _ace in the ground_."

Liara let her breath out in a rush. "Shepard…" She shook her head. "Sometimes, I wonder what I ever saw in you."

Shepard laughed. "Opportunity, T'soni. Opportunity."

* * *

After she'd imparted information regarding the transport and what Shepard could expect from Fist and the krogan battlemaster who'd been hired to kill him, Liara leaned back in her chair and made herself comfortable, crossing her legs and settling into the chair's contours.

"So, tell me about your day," she prompted, earning an eye roll from the redhead on the opposite side of the vidcomm.

"Oh,_ let me_ tell you about my day," Shepard replied. "What would you say if I told you I inadvertently saved the life of a Spectre?"

"I find it difficult to be surprised by anything you do any more, Shepard," Liara said tartly, though a smile softened the rebuke. "But why inadvertently?"

Shepard gave her a wry grin. "I didn't know he was a Spectre at the time."

Liara laughed. "You wouldn't have saved him if you'd known?" she asked.

The most favorite of her clients raised a hand and waggled it back and forth, a human gesture Liara had learned meant ambivalence.

"I don't know," Shepard answered in her typically forthright way. "On the one hand, it's a little awkward to have come to the attention of someone like a Spectre. On the other, letting Kryik get killed in the Tenth would have been bad. Very bad."

A frown creased the asari's face. "_Killed?_ What happened?"

Shepard frowned as well, her eyes going hard and flat. "Sniper," she replied. "A professional."

_Ah_. Not much got past Shepard on her turf, and for there to be a professional assassin working in Shepard's territory without her knowledge or blessing…_ and_ for said assassin to have attempted the hit right in front of her, well, Liara could only imagine how tight a rein Shepard must have on her anger for her to be this calm.

There was a tiny flicker in those green eyes, and Shepard tilted her head slightly. "Speaking of… what do you know about the wetwork trade?"

"Some," Liara admitted carefully.

"Do you think you could make some discreet inquiries; see who I might be dealing with?"

"Of course, Shepard. Although your own contacts may serve you better. As you might expect, most of the professionals I know of are asari."

The red mane tumbled as Shepard shook her head. "He wasn't human," she said. "I think he was drell."

"Drell?" Liara was surprised.

Shepard snorted. "Well, I've never seen a drell in person, and it's not like we introduced ourselves and had a little chat about the weather and our respective species," she said sarcastically, "but I'm pretty sure he was drell."

Liara frowned. "Why would the hanar want a Spectre dead?" she murmured, half to herself.

"Why would it mean the hanar were involved? I mean, I know the drell are a client race of theirs, but this wasn't just some cocky bastard in flashy armor with a laser sight and scope." Shepard pressed, also frowning.

Liara's expression was abstracted as she answered. "The hanar keep their drell agents close. They're too valuable an asset for them to let one freelance…" She stopped suddenly, her eyes snapping back to Shepard's. "Wait. The Spectre you saved… you said Kryik."

Shepard's brows drew downward, causing a furrow to appear over her nose. "Yeah. That's the name he gave."

"Goddess," Liara breathed. "Is the Illuminated Primacy getting involved in this too?"

"This?" Shepard's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean,_ this?!_"

Liara took a deep breath, feeling a rising concern. "Nihlus Kryik is the Spectre that was sent after Saren," she explained. "I'm not sure what he's doing on Earth, but it stands to reason that if he's there he's following some kind of lead that will bring him to Saren." Consternation crossed the asari's features. "I'm afraid I may have blundered, Shepard."

Shepard waved this off. "Don't worry about your quarian, Liara," she said. "I'm not exactly an amateur here."

Liara just barely caught herself before chewing nervously on her bottom lip - a holdover from her adolescence. It was a terrible tell, and she thought she'd managed to break herself of it totally.

"It isn't that," she hastened to assure the redhead. "I just… hadn't expected to land you and the quarian in the middle of things."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Do you think Saren himself will show up on Earth?"

"Before hearing about Kryik, I would have said no," Liara told her. "Now…?"

She straightened herself in her chair, folding her hands on top of each other on the desk again. "I'm going to do some digging, Shepard. There's something here that doesn't feel right."

To her credit, Shepard looked concerned but not overly worried. "Do what you need to, Liara. I trust you."

Liara's eyes softened slightly. "I know, Shepard. I'll keep you updated."

Shepard nodded and bared her teeth in a feral smile, the light catching her eyes and making them glitter dangerously. "I'll tell you one thing… if Saren does show up on Earth, he better stay well away from the Tenth or it will be a bad day for him."

"I_ don__'t_ fuck around."


	6. Memory

**Chapter Five**

_**Memory**_

The planet's night cycle was well begun by the time Thane walked briskly into the lobby of his upscale hotel in the gleaming glass and steel canyons of downtown San Diego, a sleek briefcase held in his right hand. He strode up to the concierge desk and smiled charmingly at the young human woman behind it.

"Do I have any notifications?" he asked pleasantly, leaning his left forearm casually against the counter. "My name is Tannor Nuara."

The woman returned his smile, her cheeks flushing slightly as her eyes dropped away to consult a console.

"Just a moment, Mr. Nuara," she said. "Let me check for you."

He caught the flicker of her cocoa-colored irises as she glanced surreptitiously at him through lowered eyelashes, her respiration increasing slightly.

Immediately, his senses were on alert. Paranoia, always a constant companion, screamed at him, but he forced it away. A lifetime of reading people of all species took over. He checked the discreet silver nametag attached to the woman's blouse, and watched her closely as he replied.

"I'd appreciate that… Sara."

The flush deepened, and the woman's heart rate spiked.

_Ah. Attraction, not subterfuge._ Humans, like asari, often found his species pleasing to the eye.

Sara looked up shyly and gave him a tiny shake of her head. "No notifications for you, Mr. Nuara."

Flash of memory; _sea-green eyes, fierce and furious_.

Thane ignored the intrusion of memory, allowing his smile to warm slightly, and answered, "I thank you for checking for me, Sara."

"Oh, it was no problem," the woman stammered, blushing even more furiously. Thane could feel her eyes on him as he walked away, and he put a little extra swagger in his movements just for her. Tannor_ was _a shameless flirt, after all.

Memory assaulted him again.

_One foot crossing in front of the other, each placed with care, the lean, lithe body coiled to strike. A huntress, stalking her prey._

Thane struggled to free himself from his memory's grasp, and boarded the elevator to take him to his floor.

_Hair the color of flames - or human blood - a deep, vital red._

He managed a polite smile and nod to another passenger who boarded a few floors later; an elderly human female who gave him a suspicious glare in return.

_Skin a pale golden color, dotted with darker spots over her nose and cheekbones, echoed by the blue and gold flecks in those eyes_.

The elderly woman was demanding, in a shrill, querrulous tone, to know why the elevator was still going up instead of down. Thane was too entangled in his own mind to answer, or to try to put the old one at ease.

_No fear in those eyes as he disarmed her. Anger, determination - indignation, even - but no fear. A shift in her stance as she let training and instinct take over, allowing her body to respond to his movements faster than her mind could process, as he tried to lock her body against his._

The elevator came to a stop again, the door swishing open with barely a sound to interrupt the internal battle. Thane gave his head a shake and forced his body forward, out of the elevator and down the corridor to his room. He hadn't had an episode like this in years.

_Scents coming from her body as their actions stirred the hot air around them; something light, almost fruity, combined with a cleaner, faintly musky fragrance and the bitter, hoppy note of beer and stale alcohol from the bar. A sharper smell of gun oil and eezo on her hands from the pistol she__'d carried._

He fumbled with uncharacteristic clumsiness as he entered the pass code for his door and stepped inside, straining his muddled senses to detect any changes in the room that could mean danger. This was not like him. He'd never been at the mercy of a memory in this way before.

Thane gave up. He tossed the briefcase on the bed and sank down beside it, allowing his eyes to close and the memory to take him fully.

_The target slows as he approaches a building - a drinking establishment, by the signage. A third person, human, pushes away from the wall of the building and takes a step toward the two turians. A meeting. Good. It is an excellent angle for a kill shot._

_The feeling of his rifle in his hands as he removes it from his back, letting it shift into firing mode. Some other humans exit the bar, but they are well to the right of his target and will not interfere with the shot._

_Scope settling on the target__'s skull. Forefinger caressing the trigger. _Amonkira, grant me a clean kill and my prey a quick death…

_Breath leaving his body. Finger tightening__…_

_A shout. The target snaps out of scope, tumbling to the ground as one of the humans knocks him out of the shot line. The second turian reacts instantly, reaching for a pistol at his side. The scope is filled with a tangle of limbs, but the human is already rolling and rising, her hand grasping for a weapon holstered at her ankle._

_The second turian begins to draw on her, but she shoulders him aside roughly._

_Green eyes pierce the scope._

_Pierce his soul._

Trapped in memory, Thane's body shuddered with the remembered shock of those eyes. Humans were an expressive species, but the strength of emotion in the woman's eyes was not something he was prepared for.

_She stands in the rays of the dying sun, the golden light turning her hair to flames and her eyes promising retribution, like an avenging angel._

His eyelids flickered and opened as the memory released him abruptly, leaving that image burning in his mind.

Thane breathed a long, slow breath, taking a moment to order his thoughts again before rising. Retrieving the briefcase from the bed, he walked over to a small table in one corner of the room and seated himself, setting the case on the tabletop and opening the catches with a practiced flip of his fingers. Inside, the pieces of his rifle nestled in custom made contours. He lifted them out slowly, inspecting each carefully before wiping it down and replacing it in its snug home.

When he finished with the rifle, Thane brought up the hotel's room service menu and glanced through it. He would need to eat, and then to plan. Kryik's meeting had been interrupted. Whatever he was seeking had not yet been found. Therefore, in all likelihood, Thane's target would remain on this planet a while longer. Enough time, gods willing, for him to get a second attempt.

He paused in the act of ordering, hearing the woman's growl as clearly as if she were beside him now.

"_A little help, Massani!"_

Thane blinked. Massani. That was a name he knew, surely.

Thane made his selections from the menu and sat back, focusing on the word, the sound and shape of it.

Ah, yes. The human bounty hunter. Zaeed Massani.

Thane had never had occasion to match wits against Massani, but the human certainly had a reputation for success. It was unclear what the veteran mercenary would be doing on Earth however. Despite being human, Massani was known to stick to the Terminus systems.

Still, if Kryik went to ground, perhaps Massani could be a source of information. Provided, of course, that Thane learned what the merc was doing on the human homeworld first.

_Sea-green eyes intent, promising reprisal for his trespass__… "You're in the guddamn way, Shepard!"_

_Huntress. Avenging angel__… "I don't care. Shoot him already!"_

Frowning, Thane pushed himself out of the chair and made a belated prowl of the room, assuring himself that it was secure. A glance at the chrono notified him that there was still a quarter of an hour before his meal was expected to arrive, so he carefully divested himself of his jacket, folding it neatly and hanging it over the back of a chair, and took himself into the bathroom to clean off before dinner.

Having evolved on an arid world, drell had little need for soap and water to clean themselves. Sand bathing had been common among his people before they'd left Rakhana, the fine abrasive removing excess oils and dead skin cells and leaving their finely scaled skin clean and healthy. Since leaving their desert world, they'd adapted different methods, none of which involved using the standard issue shower stall in the corner of the small room.

Instead, Thane removed his flexible armor quickly and efficiently, folding and stacking it on the toilet seat before removing one of the fluffy white hotel towels and moistening it with hot water from the sink. He then ran the damp towel over his face and head, moving briskly down his neck and over his shoulders and arms, then back to his chest, down his thighs and calves, stretching to run the towel over his back, and finally his groin and feet.

Naked, he padded into the bedroom, selecting a pair of clean, loose drawstring pants from his small luggage case and slipping them on.

Standing in the middle of the clear space in the room, Thane worked through a series of breathing exercises. His breath flowed into movement naturally, his body sliding from one posture to the next with the fluidity of water.

The chime from his locked door disrupted his meditations, and a quick glance at the chrono told him that twenty minutes had elapsed. His room service, no doubt. Still, he removed a pistol from a special compartment in his luggage case before answering the chime, keeping the weapon concealed behind his thigh as he keyed in the lock release.

The human on the other side of the door looked irritated at the wait, but handed Thane his food with an attempt at graciousness. Thane took it with his free hand, thanking the man and closing the door after transferring a gratuity from his credit chit to the man's omni-tool.

As he ate, Thane composed and sent off encrypted messages to various contacts. He would rest for a short time after his meal, and then return to the docks and see if he could pick up a cold trail on the Spectre.

_Sea-green eyes__…_

With a soft, frustrated sound, Thane began one last message.

_Human. Female. __"Shepard". Age unknown, estimated under 30 standard. Current location: San Diego, UNAS, Earth. Hair red, eyes green. Height approx 1.75 meters. May be associate of Zaeed Massani. _

He paused for a moment, considering.

…_Request all information possible._

He stopped and stared down at the entirety of the message, sea-green eyes burning in his mind, then added one final word.

_Priority._

* * *

He did not even attempt to sleep. Instead, he stretched out full length on the room's bed and deliberately brought to mind the memory of the afternoon. He would have done so in any event, as a kind of mental debrief; it paid to learn from one's mistakes. But given the strength of his earlier unbidden recall, it seemed likely that he would have had little choice in the matter, regardless. As it played out before him in his mind, he focused on nuances, small things his conscious mind had been only peripherally aware of - or even unaware of - at the time.

_Three humans exiting the bar to the right of the target, well out of his shot._

…_One of the males is large for a human, bulky and muscular. On his shirt, the emblem of the Systems Alliance. Around his neck, military identification disks._

Thane tried to bring them into focus, but could not. He hadn't been spotting through the scope; even his perfect memory couldn't provide him what he had never seen clearly to begin with.

…_The second male is not as heavily built, but still fit. His movements are somewhat stiff, stilted. His attention is focused almost entirely on the third of their group, the woman._

…"_You're in the guddamn way, Shepard!"…_

_**Shepard.**_

In the high-definition theater of his mind, Thane watched the woman step out of the bar, her head swinging around like a predator scenting the air. She is more alert, more wary than her companions. She makes to outward sign of recognition when the sweep of her gaze falls on the turians; no slight start, no momentary hesitation. As with the ID tags, Thane tried to bring her expression into focus, and again it failed to register. She is too far in the periphery to make out subtleties.

The thing about controlled memory immersion is that it offered a finer level of manipulation than spontaneous recall. With the memory now (more or less) under his control, he could skip ahead or replay a particular moment, slow it down or speed it up. Details previously unclear could be scrutinized. Armed with this ability, Thane relived the moment the shot went wrong, first exactly as it happened - Kryik stumbling out of shot, a mass of feet and legs as Thane tried to re-acquire the target, and then the woman… Shepard… uncoiling, shouldering aside the second turian, her eyes locked on Thane's position - and then more slowly.

_In the far right of the scope, a flicker. Not of movement, but of stillness. Shepard has stopped suddenly. _

_A shout, and now the flicker is movement. Shepard has launched herself explosively at Kryik. _

Lying on the bed, Thane's right index finger twitched slightly, feeling the familiar pressure of a trigger against the pad. Kryik's right temple had been in scope at that moment, as Thane was exhaling on a prayer to the god Amonkira, his finger just beginning the squeeze that would accelerate a small round of metal through the turian's skull.

_Shepard__'s shoulder catches Kryik in the lower ribs, staggering the turian and no doubt knocking the wind out of him. He overbalances and falls._

It is not a true tackle - Shepard's arms make no move to wrap around the Spectre as he falls - and nor is it an attack. Once Kryik is on the ground he seems to cease to exist for her. Her focus is now on Thane's position, and in putting herself between it and the turian behind her.

_Kryik__'s associate is drawing his weapon, and Shepard is clearly _his_ focus, but she ignores the threat of the heavy pistol - a Carnifex, if Thane is any judge - in favor of Thane__'s sniper perch. Her eyes don't waver for a fraction of a second. _

_They meet his through the scope, and though he knows she can__'t truly see him, that contact is electric. _

_Fury._

_Her hand lifts to her left ear and her lips move - _

On the bed, Thane's own lips struggled to shape the words he was seeing. Further memory helped him with the first two - they were names. "Massani," she had said, followed by the other name he'd heard her speak later, "Hutch!"

The next word he'd recognized at the time. _Sniper._

He delved back into the memory, mouth trying to twist meaning from Shepard's lips. She'd been shouting, that much was clear, and that exaggerated some syllables and smeared others.

"Sniper on the…" Try as he might, Thane could not make out the next word, but thought the final might be "building".

"Try to… _something_… down." Bring him down?

Something…_ I,_ maybe? "I'm going…?" Thane struggled with the following words, but recognized the shape a human derogative -_ bastard_. She was going to something the bastard? Kill? Was that it?

_- barking orders to hidden associates._

Orders.

The realization was almost enough to catapult Thane completely out of the memory. Despite what he himself had heard on the rooftop, he'd still somehow assumed that Shepard was working for Massani, not the other way around.

"_Massani! Eyes!" Shepard snaps, followed by, "What do you mean you don't know! It's an open rooftop, for god's sake. Is he cloaked?"_

How had he not heard the command in her voice at the time?

"_I don't care! Shoot him already!"_

Oh, yes. Command. But also frustration and anger, coloring the command, warping it slightly.

She wasn't wearing armor. Black combat fatigues with wide pockets in the thigh and calf, and a light grey tank top with pale green piping that bared her shoulders and upper chest… possibly made from armored fabric, but not enough to stop rounds from an assault rifle. That left personal shields. And no matter how strong a personal shield generator she had in her omni-tool, it couldn't stand up to concentrated, rapid fire. So ordering Massani to fire on her position was risky.

_No fear in her eyes as she faces him. Anger. Determination. Indignation__…_

Indignation?

Thane's eyes opened abruptly, and he sucked in a hard breath as he came crashing back to his current surroundings.

Amonkira… it was _personal!_ Thane's attempt - aborted though it may have been - was some kind of personal affront to the woman. That was the cause of the anger, the frustration, the… the desperation in her actions.

Could she have recognized Kryik after all? At least one of her companions was an Alliance soldier - marine, probably. Was she, too, a soldier? Had he inadvertently stumbled upon some kind of military operation?

Thane sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, exhaling sharply.

_By the gods__… I think this job just got a little more complicated._


	7. Harper

**Chapter Six**

_**Harper**_

His name was Jack Harper, although there wasn't a soul who called him that now and hadn't been for decades. He'd shed his past the day he'd embraced the future. His future, and the future of humanity itself.

He sat in a comfortable leather armchair, legs crossed in his impeccably tailored suit, sipping a particularly fine old Kentucky bourbon. Smoke spiraled lazily from the cigarette in his left hand. His eyes flickered with seeming disinterest over a bank of view screens before him, but in truth those eyes recorded every detail they took in - a gift and curse from the end of his previous life.

His lieutenant - if he had such a thing - crossed the immaculately tiled floor, her high-heeled boots chiming softly against the ceramic with each step. She was a tall, elegant brunette, all long, long legs and perfect curves. Her facial features were an exceptional balance of strong and soft; straight nose and strong jaw eased by gracefully arched brows and high cheekbones, icy blue eyes counterbalanced by a generous mouth that seemed inclined to quirk upwards at the corners. People who knew nothing about Miranda Lawson assumed that he kept her around for her looks and, perhaps…other skills… closely related to those long legs and full lips.

It amused him to think, because nothing could be further from the truth. Though he'd considered seducing the lovely young Lawson, he valued the woman far more for her professionalism, her cool capability under pressure, and her icy but formidable intellect. And, if that weren't enough, her strong biotics and the ease with which she wielded both a pistol and submachine gun were an added bonus.

She halted just past him, looking out the wide picture window to the research floor below.

"The Council knows the beacon was not destroyed in the explosions," she said quietly.

"It was a long shot at best," he answered her levelly. "Saren's involvement was a boon for us in many ways, but makes very little difference in our long-term plans."

"And Kryik?" she asked.

"A…complication, to be sure," he replied, taking a drag of his cigarette and blowing a thoughtful stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "But his goal is now Arterius, not the beacon."

"Are you sure of that?" Lawson turned to face him, her arms folded across her centerfold breasts.

"As sure as I can reasonably be," he said, snubbing out the cigarette and lifting the whiskey. He paused with the rim of the glass hovering a mere centimeter away from his bottom lip. "And the quarian?"

Lawson's mouth curled upward. "A stroke of luck," she said. "From what we can tell, she's on her way to Earth."

Harper's left eyebrow lifted. "Earth?"

"Yes. She escaped a trap engineered by Saren with the help of Liara T'soni."

"Ah," he said, his own mouth quirking in amusement. "The lovely and talented Dr. T'soni. I wonder where her interest in the quarian lies?"

Lawson shrugged. "It appears her interest is limited to the involvement of the Shadow Broker."

"Yes," mused Harper, withdrawing a fresh cigarette from a slender silver case and lighting it. "One wonders what the Shadow Broker did to earn the little asari's ire."

"Whatever it is, it's working in our favor," Lawson was quick to point out. Perhaps the one flaw in the general perfection that was Miranda Lawson - a decided lack of curiosity. And yet, even this was something that could be turned to an asset.

"Find her," he said. "And send me Leng."

Lawson nodded, dropping her arms and striding away in her easy, sensual strut.

Despite the show, Harper did not bother to watch her leave.

* * *

If Lawson was the_ most_ fortuitous of his finds, this was surely the second.

Kai Leng was perhaps as perfect a killer as could be engineered by science, building upon an innate ruthlessness and disregard for loss of life other than his own. Harper had picked him out of an Alliance prison, where he was serving a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. Prior to his incarceration, Leng had graduated from the prestigious N7 program, obtaining the highest military training designation for human special forces personnel.

Now Leng entered on completely noiseless feet. It was only the faintest of reflections on the window beyond his view screens that alerted Harper to his presence. In addition to the training he'd received, Leng was also outfitted with both genetic and cybernetic enhancements, making him stronger, faster, tougher; giving him advantages in both the unarmed and melee combat that he preferred.

"I have a little errand for you, Leng," he said without preamble.

"I didn't realize I'd been demoted," Leng replied with a faint smile.

"There is a quarian," Harper went on, pausing to exhale a faint cloud of smoke, "who is in possession of some potentially damaging information on our friend Saren Arterius."

"Where is this quarian?" Leng's voice was low, quiet, but rough around the edges.

"On a transport for Earth. Operative Lawson will tell you where."

"Just a single quarian?" Leng sounded slightly disappointed.

"Yes. But there's a catch."

"Oh?" Though he wasn't watching Leng, Harper could imagine the slight tilt to the other's head.

"I want more than just the information. I want the quarian herself. Alive. Unharmed, if possible."

The reflection shifted slightly. Leng would be clasping his hands behind his back - one of the few mannerisms left over from his career as an Alliance marine.

"Of course. Should I expect interference from Arterius?"

"Yes. As well as the Shadow Broker. And, of course, any guards that might be accompanying her on the transport."

Leng gave a single dry chuckle. "Can I assume that you don't require any of_ them _alive or uninjured?"

Harper smiled. "Deal with them as you see fit."

"Excellent," said Leng, with satisfaction.

"Go coordinate with Lawson," instructed Harper, crushing out the end of yet another cigarette.

Leng nodded to the back of his head, and turned, only the tiniest of rustles from his form-fitting armored jacket betraying the movement. Nevertheless, Harper stopped Leng just as the man was about to exit, his expression hidden behind the ever-present glass of bourbon.

"And Leng?" said Harper, with a note of idleness that almost, but not quite disguised the steel behind it, "Try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum."

Leng paused with his hand on the doorway, his expression carefully blank. "Yes. Sir."


	8. Shell Game

**Chapter Seven**

_**Shell Game**_

"This is your wake up call, Mr. Massani," purred a voice from the wall. "Your presence is requested in the briefing room in twenty minutes."

The tone of the voice changed, from a purr to a growl. "Don't be late, Old Man."

Zaeed Massani groaned and rolled over.

_Guddamn Shepard. Guddamm mornings._

_Guddamn intercom._

It used to be that Shepard made him feel old because she was so young. Now it was because she ran his guddamn ass off.

_Some bloody retirement__…_

He levered himself out of bed and shuffled across his quarters to the bathroom, hoping a hot shower would do the work of black coffee and a leisurely breakfast.

* * *

There was black coffee waiting for him in the briefing room. It was just shy of scalding and almost tar-like in both consistency and flavor. Shepard knew just how he liked it.

A mug of a similarly beloved beverage was in front of every person in the room. Shepard might be a bloody-minded bitch sometimes, but she knew her people, and she looked after them. Part of the Shepard magic was the way she could balance authority and familiarity with her people. She was, in the grizzled old mercenary's opinion, the kind of leader that guddamn legends were written about. She made you_ want _to follow her. Sometimes even against your better judgment.

Zaeed sipped his coffee and winced with pleasure. Just like a kick in the teeth, bless the woman.

"We've got a job this morning, ladies and gentlemen," Shepard said.

"Don't fucking_ lady_ me, Shepard," growled Jack. "The only fucking_ lady_ in this room is Joker." The biotic was prickly and short-tempered at the best of times, but this morning there was a certain tightness around the corners of her eyes that Zaeed recognized instantly.

_Hangover. Guddamn big one._

"I stand corrected," Shepard replied smoothly. "You _cranky little bitches_ and I have a pick up to make in LA."

Zaeed ran an eye over the people in the room and narrowed his eyes. "Why so many for a pick up?" he asked bluntly.

Shepard gave him a smile that had nothing to do with humor. "Because I expect there will be a lot of angry people with guns at some point."

"Of course there will be." Shepard's pilot rolled his eyes under his ball cap. "Can't we ever do _anything_ without pissing people off?"

"You knew the score when you joined, Joker," Shepard reminded him.

Joker shook his head. "I don't remember_ that_ being in the job description."

"It was in the fine print," she told him.

"I thought you said that was just there to make Liara happy."

"That was your first mistake, Joker. Never trust an asari lawyer."

Joker rolled his eyes again, but he was grinning. The pilot was about as useful on the ground as tits on a bull, but once he was in the air, he was a genius. And he needed to be. Between his fragility and the way he ran his mouth off, there was a lot - in Zaeed's opinion - the kid needed to make up for.

_Guddamn pain in the ass_. But Shepard bloody adored the bastard. And even he had to admit, the kid was one hell of a pilot.

"Huh. Smash and grab, then?" This was from Rob Hutchins, a tall, raw boned blond man with a nose that had been broken so many times it now took a meandering path from bridge to tip. Good man in a fight. Handled all guns with ease, and the sinews on those big bones gave him punch like a krogan. Though his easy-going, unfussed nature made him seem simple - a facade so good Zaeed suspected him of practicing in the mirror - he was one of Shepard's top lieutenants for good reason. Solid, unflappable, and calculating under pressure, Hutch could follow instructions to the letter or operate by sheer, seat-of-the-pants instinct. More importantly, he knew when each was appropriate.

"Fuck, Cornfed," groused Jack. "If it was a smash and grab, she would have said so at the beginning."

Hutch took this with his usual aplomb. He was a hard man to anger, though god knows Jack tried. "Competitors?" he asked.

Shepard pointed a finger at him. "Got it in one."

"What's the package?" Zaeed heard someone ask, realizing belatedly that it was himself.

"If you would all shut up for five minutes, I could tell you." Shepard said with just a hint of steel under the jocular tone. They quieted instantly.

There was a group reaching for mugs, possibly to hide behind, because Shepard was using The Stare. It was a guddamn weapon, that stare. It was what had convinced Zaeed to take a chance on a seventeen year old kid and her promise to deliver payback on a debt older than she was, that stare.

"The package," she went on, as her eyes traveled around the group, "is a quarian who is in more trouble than she knows. Our job is to make sure that trouble doesn't catch up with her."

_Guddamn babysitting_. Zaeed _hated_ babysitting jobs.

"If any of you were paying attention, you'd see that I've locked this room down tight. Details of this job are _not_ to leave it, do I make myself clear? You are my most trusted people, and my most skilled. I need both for this."

Zaeed set his coffee down carefully. It wasn't like Shepard to overstate a job.

Again, the green eyes moved from person to person. "And the reason for this is that one of the parties after this package is the Shadow Broker. I'm sure you've all heard the name before."

Shepard folded her arms on her chest and rocked her weight back onto her right heel as she continued. "Beyond the Shadow Broker, we will also be dealing with agents of the rogue Spectre we heard about yesterday. And given that one of the reasons we _know_ about the rogue Spectre is the little incident with the_ other_ Spectre, there is the chance that we'll also be seeing our new friend Mr. Kryik show up." She dropped her arms again, and reached forward to place her palms on the table, leaning her weight on them. "And, of course, if Mr. Kryik shows up, it's a fair bet that that god-damn-son-of-a-bitch professional will turn up again, too."

Shepard ground her teeth for a moment before going on to outline the plan for the job, her voice perfectly controlled. Zaeed knew better.

_Still angry_. He wouldn't want to be that bloody assassin when Shepard caught up to him. Professional or not, that guddamn drell wouldn't know what hit him. _Nobody_ worked in the Tenth without Shepard's go-ahead.

Twice, at any rate.

Despite that anger, Shepard's plan lacked none of the surgical precision he expected from her, because more of the Shepard magic lay in her ability to plan and run a job. Charisma only went so far. That ability was why a bounty hunter of his repute would now be working for a kid running a street gang back on the guddamn overpopulated Earth, of all things. If the stare had gotten his attention nine years ago, the plan she'd laid out had clinched the deal. Shepard was more than just a pretty face with a gun. She was a thinker, and bloody cunning to boot.

Her tits were just a bonus, albeit a nice one.

Each of them had a specific part to play in the upcoming job. Shepard never brought bodies just to have numbers. Zaeed had seen one of her three-man fireteams take on a rival gang's squad that outnumbered them five to one, and emerge without a scratch. She preferred to pick the right people, brief them well, arm them better, and let them do what they did best.

And it was making her rich.

As her eyes met each of them in turn, just prior to dismissing them, Zaeed permitted himself to smile, just a little, as the green eyes weighed his and moved on.

Hell. Who was he kidding? Comfort, money, and the chance to shoot things when he felt like it? This was the best bloody retirement he could imagine.

* * *

Urdnot Wrex was… well, he honestly wasn't sure how old he was any more. After a while, the years and the blood all sort of run together. What he did know was his job, and he was good at it. He went where people told him to go, and shot people he was paid to shoot. He was a gun for hire.

Currently, his employer was the infamous Shadow Broker, and the person he was being paid to shoot was a cowardly little pyjak calling himself Fist. Why the human didn't call himself Lung, or Foot, or Quad, Wrex'd never know. Many things that humans did made little sense to the krogan battlemaster. They'd turned the Council on their ear, though, and no mistake, whatever spin the Council had chosen to put on it. Squishy little primates got knocked down by the Council's resident assholes, the turians, and then got right back up and kicked 'em in the quad.

Wrex liked that.

Rumor had it that the only reason the asari forced a truce and settled the so-called Relay 314 dispute diplomatically was because the Council was afraid the humans would actually win. Wrex doubted that, but suspected that the truth was not that far off - that the Council feared a protracted war between the humans and turians would weaken the turian-heavy Council fleet to the point that opportunists could begin raids in Council space with, if not impunity, at least a greatly decreased risk of retaliation in force. Humans, if they did but know it, had wobbled the thrones of the high and mighty Council.

Now, of course, the humans were bound up in all the bureaucratic shit the Council threw at everyone, and were forced to work from within the system. And by this point the salarians would have come up with some plan to neutralize the entire race of them, should they grow stronger than the Council wished them to be.

Poor stupid bastards.

His musings were beside the point, however. He still needed a way to get to the pyjak in question, who was holed up in a merc ship in a heavily guarded docking bay in one of Earth's spaceports, and had been since the spineless bastard had arrived. Wrex didn't have the ordinance to blow the whole ship, and a direct assault on the docking bay would involve what passed for local security, and that would make this job even more of a pain in the ass than it had already been. And, since krogan didn't sneak, that left just one option for Wrex to take, which was to wait the human out. Eventually, Fist would leave the protection of his ship, and when he did, Wrex would kill him.

It was simple, and Wrex liked simple.

* * *

Fist was nervous. This was a disaster. First, he'd allowed himself to be swayed by a god damn Spectre - admittedly for a lot of money - to cross the Shadow Broker. Then the men he'd sent to collect the god damn quarian had been beaten to the punch by an asari barely out of her adolescence - admittedly a lifetime for most species - and Fist had been left looking like a fool. Worse, now both Saren and the god damn Shadow Broker were angry, and Fist was forced to leave his stronghold on the Citadel - a "gentlemen's club" called Chora's Den - to go after the quarian on Earth, where he had sworn never to return (admittedly because there were several outstanding warrants for his arrest).

Things could be worse - admittedly - but not by much. As it was, Fist's only salvation lay in getting his hands on the quarian, transferring her to Saren's agent, and getting the hell back to his heavily guarded club before anyone tracked him down.

_And_ these mercenaries were costing him a fortune!

His informant had been able to get him the name of the ship the quarian had left on, thankfully. That bitch of an asari was sneaky, and had hired out a regular cargo transport rather than a passenger ship, to draw less attention. It hadn't been too difficult to track it's destination - Los Angeles, on Earth - and get there ahead of it, although that, too, had been costly. He'd considered trying to intercept the transport en route, but the risk of attracting attention from the Alliance or one of the Council fleet ships was a bit too high - after all, this wasn't a little-traveled freighter lane out in the Terminus. Such overtly piratical activity as disabling and boarding a cargo vessel along the main relays between Earth and the Citadel was bound to provoke a swift response. So Fist had been forced to make due with bribing one of the spaceport's traffic control operators to berth the transport in an out-of-the-way dock of Fist's choosing, the better to set up an ambush. When the god damn ship finally arrived, Fist and his mercenaries would be waiting. They'd kill whatever guards the asari had sent with the quarian, pick her up, and be out of the Sol system, where he could contact Saren and arrange to deliver her into the turian's scaly hands.

After all, better late than dead, right?

* * *

In the shadows of a maintenance catwalk, Kai Leng surveyed the cargo docks, his new ocular implants feeding him more information than his eyes ever could. Vital signs, distance, heat signatures, sure, but a simple visor could do that much. Weaknesses - in armor, machinery, structures. Concealed weapons. The past, as told by residual heat or traces of eezo. He could magnify ambient light, filter it to reduce glare or haze, negate the effects of flashbang grenades… oh, the list seemed endless. Leng wasn't just at the pinnacle of human ability any more, he was the_ future_ of human ability.

One man made that future possible; a man who had given up his very identity to become the guardian and shepherd of humanity. A man who would lead the human race to their destiny at the forefront of all the races in the galaxy, no matter how many bodies he had to climb over to do so.

And if necessary, Leng could provide him the bodies.

So here he was, high above the oblivious scurrying of the transport workers below, like a god looking down from the heavens. Unbeknownst to them, he held their lives in his hand. The merest twitch of one fingertip could end a life. It was a heady feeling; exhilarating. It suffused him, filling him with unshakable confidence.

In the confines of his tight-fitting light armor, his cock twitched. He smiled to himself. It also turned him on.

So far, all of Lawson's information was proving good. According to the traffic control feeds, the cargo transport was inbound, awaiting a vector and berth. In this quiet, out of the way section of the cargo terminal, there was only one ship berthed, and it was not a cargo transport. It was a frigate-class ship flying mercenary colors - Blue Suns - that Lawson believed to be in the employ of one of Arterius' agents. And, stomping around the corridors was a krogan - independent, not displaying Blood Pack insignia on his armor - that Lawson had pegged as the Shadow Broker's agent, though doubtlessly there were others. Leng knew well enough that a Shadow Broker agent you knew about was one he wanted you to know about. As such, he remained alert, watchful, but no other potential threats revealed themselves until a small woman with an impressive amount of ink spoke to the krogan.

Leng was not close enough to hear their conversation, and he had yet to outfit himself with aural implants. He made due with watching their body language, which said that this was a first meeting - these were not confederates. However, after a very brief conversation, the woman walked away, and the krogan followed. For the skin of a second, Leng was torn, but the Illusive Man had been explicit in his request. The quarian was his target. The Shadow Broker's agent - or agents - were just a distraction. It would be amusing to remove them, simply as an irritation to the Broker, but it might interfere with his primary task.

He watched the pair leave with narrowed eyes. Both the woman and the krogan were biotics. He'd have to remember that. Leng had learned to recognize the residual traces of static electricity that active biotics tended to produce. Although Leng himself was not a biotic, biotics didn't worry him unduly - a position that frequently put him at odds with Lawson - but they did require an adjustment of tactics.

Lawson had disapproved of him being sent alone to deal with this job. Not that she'd said anything, but Lawson had a way of not saying things that was louder than shouting. Or perhaps it was just Lawson's general disapproval of him in general. He knew she held a low opinion of him, despite acknowledging his success rate. She thought he was cocky and over-confident, though she couched it in phrases like, "inefficiency" and "unacceptable risks".

He disliked Lawson as well, with her air of superiority and her frigidity. Such a waste. She'd also refused even the simplest of upgrades, preferring to rely solely on her "perfect" enhanced genetics. She was the Illusive Man's top agent, and took considerable pride - a quiet, self-satisfied kind of pride - in the fact. She thought she was untouchable. He knew better.

Leng felt the smile curve his lips again, and another throb in his groin.

Someday, he'd get to kill her. He was looking forward to it.

* * *

Wrex was stomping along the corridor outside the pyjak's docking bay when he was accosted by a tiny female human bristling with anger and biotics.

"Hey," she called, stomping after him, not bothering with social niceties. "You the krogan after a piece of shit named Fist?"

"What do you want, human?" he asked, his massive hump towering over her and his deep red eyes fixing on her.

"An answer to my question, asshole."

Wrex surprised himself by laughing. "You've got a quad, human." He shrugged his shoulders. "What if I am?"

The human gave a slight jerk of her head. "Then my boss wants to talk to you."

Wrex made a show of looking around. "So where is he?"

"You think she's stupid enough to meet with you here, right in front of that douchebag's ship? Fuck that." The little female turned on her heel and stalked away.

After a moment, out of curiosity more than anything else, Wrex followed.

The human led him to a private shuttle bay where he was met by a second human, also female, but larger. This one was more composed than the first, and her eyes were coolly measuring. Unlike the first, she wore armor; simple, not heavily modded or garishly flashy, in a red even deeper than his own. A compact heavy pistol sat at her hip, ignored, as was the SMG at her back. Usually humans felt a need to bluster around him, or showed fear. This one did neither. Wrex felt grudging approval.

"Urdnot Wrex?" she asked, and the krogan's eyes narrowed.

"Do I know you, human?" he replied.

"No," she said. "But Fist is after something I want. You're here so I can find out if we're going to have a problem."

"Not unless you get in my way," Wrex rumbled. He tipped his head so that he could stare at the human with first one eye and then the other. "This is about the quarian, isn't it?"

There was a flare of blue around the smaller female as she readied a warp field.

Wrex snorted. "Put it away, little pyjak," he said. "I'm not impressed."

The bigger female glanced once at the biotic, and the flare died away. "Your funeral," said the biotic with a shrug, and went back to leaning casually against the hull of the shuttle.

The other human folded her arms across her chest and lifted the hair above her left eye. "Are you after the quarian?" she asked.

"Do you think I'd tell you if I was?" he sent back.

She smiled at him, her teeth flat and white except for two small, sharp ones near the corners of her smile. "No."

"Then why bother asking? You should have just shot me."

"When you're planning on killing my competitor?" The other ridge of hair joined the first. "Why would I want to do that?"

Wrex bit off a bark of laughter. These humans were entertaining.

"My people have a saying," he told her, watching her with one eye. "Seek your enemy's enemy, and you will find a friend."

"Mine have a similar belief," she agreed, with a dip of her head. "It's one that's worked for me in the past."

Wrex considered for a moment, still watching the human. Then he shrugged. "I don't have any interest in your quarian," he said. "I'm here for Fist. I'm not being paid for anything more."

The human's smile widened. She dropped her hands to her sides, and then held one out for him to grasp in a human gesture of fellowship. "My name's Shepard," she said. "And if you help me, I'll get you Fist."

* * *

"The krogan's gone."

Fist risked a grin of relief. The damn thing had been lurking in the passageway just outside their docking bay. Krogan were ubiquitous throughout the galaxy wherever there was heavy lifting to be done or heads to be busted. But they weren't exactly common on Earth, and he'd been half afraid that this one was working for the asari. Or worse, Saren. He'd heard that Saren wasn't too keen on failure. He nodded to the merc captain.

"Get your men ready to move. The transport's on it's way to dock."

The merc captain gave him a nod of acknowledgment. After the mercenary left, Fist checked his own weapons and armor thoroughly, making sure that the new shield booster was working properly with his armor miniframe.

He made his way through the ship to the airlock, and waited for the pressure cycle to complete itself, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. When the exterior door opened, he was immediately hit by the stench of the city; heated concrete and smog and the concentrated reek of a billion humans living their lives. It wasn't a smell you got on the CItadel, not even in the poorest parts of Zakera Ward, which had by far the largest human population. On the Citadel there was always something else - the coppery tang of turians, the heavy musk of krogan, the scent of asari, who, when they weren't wearing perfume, reminded Fist of the smell of the tea you got in Chinese restaurants. Even the occasional animal stench of vorcha was there to compete with the odor of a million warring perfumes and hair products and deodorants that almost, but not quite, overpowered the sweat and exhalations and mingled together to become the smell of human civilization.

Here in Los Angeles, there wasn't anything to compete with it. Fist took a deep breath. There was the smell of sunlight in there, too, Fist was sure of it. At one point he would have laughed if someone tried to tell him that sunlight had a smell. Now, having lived nearly a decade in the artificial confines of the Citadel, he knew better.

It wasn't that he wanted to come back. Not at all. He had a good thing going on the Citadel. A really good thing, and there was no way he'd trade it for the stink of BO and dirt and ozone, or whatever the smell of sunlight actually was caused by. But maybe he had missed solid ground beneath his feet more than he realized. Well, with the money he'd make from this job - minus the cost of the fucking mercs, cutthroat bastards that they were - he could afford a vacation somewhere nice and anonymous. He'd heard there was this ritzy hotel on Illium that catered to a certain kind of clientele. He could see if the rumors were true.

Fist watched as the mercenary captain directed his troops to spread out and take cover throughout the docking bay. He nodded to the two LA Spaceport Authority guards on duty at the docking bay entrance, and they quietly left. Satisfied that everything was proceeding to plan, he used his omni-tool to overide the lock on the door and sealed them in. There was no way the quarian was getting away from him this time.

Ten minutes later, the heavy, rectangular hull of the Kowloon-class cargo ship settled ponderously into the docking bay like a wallowing sow, the bay's docking clamps hissing into position and attaching themselves with deep thumps that reverberated in the enclosed space. Fist signaled the merc captain to have his men hold position - no sense in spooking the quarry until the trap was well and truly sprung. There was a grinding, clunking noise as the transport's airlock was engaged, followed by the rhythmic rattle of pressure pumps as the ship equalized the environment inside the airlock to that of the docking bay. The jetway lowered into place, nuzzling up to the hull like a lover. The exterior hull door parted with a faint sucking sound, and a few moments later, pair of asari guards stepped out of the jetway, flanking a figure attempting to conceal itself behind a loose asari-style robe and hood.

Fist signaled the mercenaries and stepped out from behind a stack of crates to confront them, his assault rifle held loosely yet pointedly in his hands.

"Just hand over the quarian, and nobody has to get hurt," he said.

And that was when it all went to hell.

Behind him, Fist could hear the whirring of the lock he'd overridden to keep the quarian in and all others out. Someone had just bypassed his damn lockout codes. He barely had time to dive to one side before the door slid open and a ball of bright blue energy burst through it, scattering mercs like toy soldiers.

One of the asari guards was down - at least somebody on the merc squad was worth what Fist was paying them - but the second was spraying assault rifle fire around pretty indiscriminately. Fist ducked behind a stack of crates and waited for a break in her fire, swearing to himself. And that was when the krogan appeared, charging through the open docking bay door in the wake of the biotic shockwave, his own biotics leveling crates and crushing mercenaries beneath them. He held a shotgun like a small cannon in his hands, and any merc fast enough to dodge the crates and lucky enough to remain standing was quickly cut down by its punishing roar.

Behind the krogan came two humans, one surrounded by the halo of biotics and the other by heavy tactical armor. The biotic was flinging more shockwaves, crying out a promise to destroy them all. The armored human held an assault rifle tightly to his shoulder and wielded it with easy precision, firing perfect short three-round bursts that ate away shields as fast as they could regenerate.

"Fuck!"

Fist focused his fire on the biotic as being the least armored of the trio. He resisted the pull field she aimed at him, grateful for the exoskeleton mod he'd added to his armor since moving to the Citadel. But the rifleman turned in his direction and one of those three-round bursts caught his shields, dropping them by nearly a third, despite the new booster.

_Shit_. Non-standard ammo. Fucking_ cocksuckers_.

Fist dropped back into cover, and_ that_ was when the ship blew.

* * *

There was a stir near the Blue Suns' ship, and a group of mercenaries exited the docking bay. There were eight of them, plus Arterius' agent. Two were batarians, the remainder human. One shimmered with traces of biotic ability, another two with the crackle of electronics that generally indicated a tech or engineer.

_Cannon fodder_, Leng thought dismissively. He'd dealt with the Suns before.

He followed along above them on the catwalk as they trooped to the most remote of the bays in this terminal. A couple of security personnel were lounging outside, but turned and left following a brief nod from Arterius' agent - a muscular human with a scarred face and close-cropped hair. The man wore expensive armor, highly modded, and expensive guns. The others wore the standard blue-and-white heavy armor of the Suns, and weapons that were reliable but low-priced, manufactured by Elkoss Combine or Batarian State Arms.

The lock on the docking bay door cycled red after a moment. The cargo ship and her quarian passenger must have completed their re-entry and be coming in to dock. Leng tapped into traffic control briefly to verify, and looked up to see the tattooed woman and krogan storming down the passage. With them was a third person; human, male, and heavily armored.

The trio stopped; the human male stepped up to the door and began to bypass the locking codes. When he finished and the lock cycled back to green, he grinned and stepped back with a slight wave of his hand to indicate the woman should go first. She flared with brilliant blue energy, biotics lighting up in preparation for a heavy shockwave she sent through the doorway the moment the door slid back.

The krogan drew a big bore shotgun from his back and charged with a roar, hard on the heels of the shockwave. Behind him, the man had drawn a very well-made assault rifle with an air of easy confidence, and now held it in a high firing position, military-style, laying down sharp staccato bursts of suppressing fire as the woman followed after the krogan with a cry of, "I will destroy you!"

_Nice_. Leng smiled to himself with pleasure, feeling the delicious tightness throughout his body that preceded a fight. This was going to be _fun_.

He dropped soundlessly from the catwalk, stalking to the open doorway.

Which exploded outward, flinging him hard into the wall behind him.

* * *

The explosion rocked the entire eastern side of the spaceport.

Nihlus Kryik swore colorfully. "How much do you want to bet that was our lead?" he asked Vakarian, breaking into a sprint, the Spectre candidate a short step behind him.

"I wouldn't," the younger turian answered. "I don't much like the odds."

They ran on through a crowd of people - mostly dockworkers, on this side of the spaceport - all stampeding in the opposite direction. A few Port Authority guards were pushing their way against the flow, but it seemed that nobody wanted to take the chance that there wouldn't be any further explosions.

It wasn't hard to find the docking bay where the blast had originated. The doorway had peeled back like an opening chrysanthemum. There was debris scattered all over the bay; large chunks of the transport, crates both intact and splintered, bodies and bits of bodies - mostly human, but also asari, batarian. There appeared to be no survivors.

Nihlus quickly found the source of the destruction in the remains of a military grade explosive device attached to the underside of one of the docking clamps.

"Perfectly set up and remotely triggered," he said, disgust warring with admiration in his voice. "Professional, and cocky. Didn't care if there was evidence left behind."

"Saren?" wondered Vakarian.

"Possibly," Nihlus conceded. "But it would be easy to blame everything on Saren, while overlooking other possibilities. We need to keep an open mind."

"Understood," said Vakarian crisply, but there was an undercurrent of puzzlement in his subharmonics.

"What is it?" Nihlus asked, looking up sharply.

"I'm… not sure," said Vakarian. "It may not be anything." He was studying an area of the docking bay not far from the doors. "But take a look at the debris pattern here. I think… I think there might have been some kind of kinetic barrier…?"

Nihlus crossed to Vakarian's side. As soon as he considered the kid's suggestion, it was obvious that there was a part of the debris field that looked suspiciously barren.

"Good eye," he said, grinning at the pleased flutter of the other's mandibles. "I think you're right." He glanced up at the dangling remains of security cameras. "We can check the security feeds, although I have my suspicions that the cameras in this whole section of the cargo terminal were deactivated long before that bomb went off."

The Spectre scratched a mandible thoughtfully. "It might not be a bad idea to cast our net a little wider, however. We might pick up something in feeds from other cameras that will be useful."

"Right," said Vakarian, trying in vain to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Nihlus laughed, and clapped the younger turian on the shoulder.

"It can't be_ all_ firefights and desperate chases," he said. "No matter what the vids say."

Vakarian gave him a rueful and slightly embarrassed grin. "I know," he admitted. "It's just… Well, how do_ you_ deal with the disappointment? The frustration? This is two leads just… gone." Vakarian made an empty grasping motion, as if he could snatch them back from the jaws of failure.

Nihlus shrugged. "I save it up. Turn it to something useful later. When it_ is _time for the firefights and desperate chases." He eyed Vakarian thoughtfully. "Feel like giving up?"

Vakarian shook his head. "No, sir." He paused, and then added, "The opposite, actually. Whoever did this… There was a crew aboard that ship. Whoever did this didn't care how many innocent people died. That's… it's barbaric." The young turian's pale blue eyes burned fiercely, but he managed a crooked flare of his mandibles. "_And_ sloppy."

"Good. I'm glad you feel that way."

Nihlus took a final look around the docking bay, and his eye fell on a small splash of color on a broken crate. Curiously, he approached it, crouching down to look more carefully, and captured a scan with his omni-tool for verification. Wordlessly, Vakarian followed.

"Blood," the Spectre confirmed, as the scan results were displayed. "Krogan."

"Not very much," Vakarian remarked, crouching beside him and taking his own look at the orange smear. "I'd think you'd expect more if the krogan was caught an explosion of this size.

"Not necessarily," cautioned Nihlus. "A krogan in heavy armor could easily survive even that big a blast, provided there wasn't a lot of fire - which there doesn't appear to have been."

"A krogan in heavy armor," mused Vakarian. "A mercenary?"

Nihlus nodded. "Very likely."

"But whose? If he was Saren's, and Saren planted that bomb, you'd think Saren would wait to detonate it. Unless he was counting on just what you said - that a krogan in heavy armor could easily survive it." Vakarian's brow plates drew downward. "That's _if_ Saren is responsible for the bomb. And if it_ wasn__'t_ Saren, then who? And where does the krogan fit in then?"

"We don't have enough data to begin to speculate," Nihlus answered. "But at least we know what to start looking for in the security feeds."

Vakarian's grin was predatory. "A krogan in heavy armor."

* * *

Leng shook his head to clear it, and cursed to himself. The blast and subsequent impact had knocked him senseless for a moment. He quickly rolled to his feet, glancing at the damage around him.

_Damn._ He frowned. If the quarian had been in that, the Illusive Man was going to be very angry. And disappointed. Leng was good, but his specialty was making corpses, not reviving them.

A flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head sharply. Somehow, the krogan had survived the explosion, and was stumbling along the corridor, heading for the entrance to the very maintenance catwalks Leng had just been making use of. And now that his eyes were focused in that direction, Leng's implants spat out data, compensating for the thick, acrid smoke lingering in the passage. There was the solid bulk of the krogan, plus two other moving heat signatures. One of the signatures was faint and blobby, distorted, appearing almost hunchbacked.

Or carrying a body. One with a muffled heat signature, as though wearing armor or an envirosuit.

The faint smile reappeared on his face, and he crouched slightly, preparing himself, then sprung upward, catching the lip of the catwalk four meters above his head and pulling himself up easily. From his back he drew a short, straight, single-edged blade, thin as a whisper and sharper than a razor.

The small group had climbed the access ladder and was struggling along through the smoke, the biotic leading, followed by the human man with a body slung across his shoulders in a fireman's carry, and the krogan bringing up the rear. With quick, noiseless steps, Leng closed the distance between them, preparing to take them unawares.

"Someone's following," mumbled the krogan thickly, slowing up and turning. He was swaying slightly on his feet.

WIthout waiting for the krogan to set himself further, Leng attacked, bringing his sword down in a powerful strike. But even dazed as he was, the krogan was quick, deflecting the blade with a sweep of his arm and lumbering into the assassin.

Leng danced away, dodging the krogan's clumsy charge easily, and slipped back in, driving the sword upward with a darkly satisfied smile.

It never connected. The biotic flung out a hand and sent him tumbling.

"Go, go!" she yelled at the others. "I'll deal with this asshole."

Leng rolled with the force of the throw and sprang to his feet, eyes narrowed.

The biotic bared her teeth at him in a snarl and her hand shot forward, propelling a shockwave in his direction. Leng flattened himself against the railing of the catwalk, making the surface area exposed to the blast as small as possible and braced himself.

It broke over him harmlessly, knocking down his shields, but leaving him uninjured and on his feet. He charged again, knowing it would take the woman a moment or two to recharge her biotics.

Unexpectedly, she caught him with a right hook. In his experience, biotics didn't tend to be hand-to-hand experts. They generally didn't need to be. But this was a solid punch, connecting strongly with his jaw, staggering him.

"What's the matter, princess?" the biotic jeered at him. "Can't take a punch?"

Leng raised his left hand to touch his face gingerly, tasting blood. His lip curled.

"You'll pay for that," he promised flatly.

"And who's going to make me," she sneered, drawing her hand back again, "when you're_ dead?_"

Leng dropped to the floor of the catwalk as the fabric of matter around and above him was warped. Like a striking snake, he whipped his leg around, sweeping the girl's feet out from under her. As she hit the metal, he was on her, the weight of his body pinning her to the catwalk, the flat of his sword caressing her cheek.

"Big talk," he chided, as she struggled beneath him. "But wrong." He twisted the blade slightly in his hand, cocking his head to the side as he watched a thin line of blood spring to the surface of her skin. He chuckled softly. "Very wrong."

But the woman was staring at his neck, and her eyes had gone flat and hard.

"Cerberus," she spat, and before Leng could react, she'd hit him with a throw field so heavy he was flung back fifteen meters to the end of the catwalk, where he caught the railing in the middle of his back. The impact knocked the breath from him, but he wasn't allowed to come to rest. The force of the throw was so great that hitting the catwalk railing merely flipped him, heels over head, and sent him arcing out over empty air.

When he was finally able to regain the catwalk, his quarry was gone.

* * *

"Shit," gasped Jack as she collapsed into the waiting shuttle. "Shepard fucking _owes_ me."

Steve Cortez, the Reds' secondary pilot, glanced at the returning squad over the back of the pilot's seat. The biotic had a cut along one side of her face that was bleeding freely, and when Hutch slung an unconscious body from his shoulders, it revealed armor that looked as if it had been through hell.

Worried eyes met Hutch's. "Rob? You okay?"

"Fine, thanks for fucking asking," Jack snapped at the pilot. "Just get us the hell out of here before someone _else_ decides to blow shit up." She shifted slightly to allow the scorched bulk of the krogan mercenary on board.

"I'm going to kill whoever planted that bomb," slurred the krogan. His eyes had a slightly unfocused look about them - it was possible that only the presence of a secondary nervous system was responsible for keeping him conscious.

"What happened?" Cortez demanded as he kicked up the engines and prepared to leave dock.

Hutch dropped into one of the uncomfortable jump seats and winced, rummaging in a storage compartment for a tube of medi-gel, which he tossed to Jack. "Things didn't go to plan," he said. "I_ hate _it when things don't go to plan."

"Fuck, yeah," agreed Jack, breaking the seal on the medi-gel and smearing some on the cut. "Shit. I got blood everywhere."

"Guess I should probably check on our passenger," Hutch remarked, levering himself to his feet slowly. Even with Jack's quick-thinking and biotic barrier, he'd still taken a beating.

His eyes slid to the pilot's seat, where Cortez was on the comm, requesting clearance from air traffic control. He doubted he'd be able to follow through with his original plans for the evening. He hoped Steve wouldn't mind.

"Which one?" Jack asked acidly, shoving the krogan off her shoulder where he'd come to rest, slightly slumped.

Hutch shook his head wryly. The krogan had taken the full brunt of the explosion, and gotten to his feet afterward. The big guy was definitely looking a few twinkles short of a glitter* now, though. Still, Hutch'd fought enough of them to know that the krogan's body would be regenerating like mad. Hutch would still be nursing bruised ribs a day from now, but you wouldn't even know the krogan had almost gotten his ass blown off in another hour or two.

"Damn," Cortez swore softly, as Hutch crouched to scan their unconscious friend's vital signs. "Traffic's being held…_ due to an _explosion_ at the spaceport_." The pilot's voice was both accusatory and questioning. "We won't be going anywhere for a while."

"Told you," said Hutch mildly. "Things didn't go to plan."

Jack snorted. "Shepard's going to have a shit fit if we don't make rendezvous." She nudged the limp form laid out on the floor of the shuttle with the toe of her boot. "We better get paid extra for this one."

Hutch huffed the ghost of a laugh and straightened up, wincing. With a hand to his ear, he activated his embedded comm. "Shepard?" he murmured into the open channel. "You out there?"

"I'm here, Hutch," came the answer. "Go ahead."

There was enough comm chatter around the spaceport that it was nearly impossible to ensure a secure channel, so Shepard didn't try. Nor did she bother with codes, or cryptic messages. Even their standard radio protocols had been abandoned for casual speech. In a case like this, people would be alert to subterfuge, so why sneak?

"Uh… we're still at LAXP," he said carefully. "Something's got traffic all jammed up, and we're waiting on our departure."

Shepard was silent for a moment. "Well, fuck," she said finally, and Hutch grinned, imagining the effort it took his commander to limit herself to just those two words. "How's everyone doing?"

Hutch looked around the shuttle's main compartment. Two conscious, one partly conscious, one unconscious. "Okay?" he hazarded. He felt that this was somehow inadequate, so he amended, "Long day, though."

But if he was hoping for sympathy from Shepard, he was going to be disappointed. "How long do you think you'll have to wait?"

He shrugged, though Shepard couldn't see it. "I don't know. Steve's working on it."

"Is this going to cause any problems on your end?" There was a hint of concern in Shepard's voice.

"Nnno," Hutch answered, looking over the vital signs he'd just scanned. "Nothing we can't handle."

"Good." Shepard sounded satisfied. "Let me know when you're cleared." A beat, and then, innocently, "Any idea what's causing the hold up?"

"There was a big boom over at the spaceport a little while ago," he replied honestly enough. "Maybe there was a crash." He shot a sly look at the biotic and added, "Or maybe those crazy L2s are at it again."

"Hey!" Jack snapped irritably, needled by the dig. "_You_ try having your brains fried and see how you like it, asshole."

"_Great_," said Shepard facetiously, or what Hutch hoped was facetiously. "That'll be on the news vids for _days_." She sighed. "Keep me posted."

"Will do, Shepard."

Hutch closed the comm, and turned toward Cortez. "How are we doing?"

The pilot shook his head. "I was going to ask you the same question."

"Oh, isn't that _sweet_," muttered Jack sarcastically. "Cortez, quit discussing your relationship with Cornfed and get us the hell out of here."

Hutch rolled his eyes and answered Cortez. "Stable, but out and likely to remain that way for a good while," he said. "We've got some time."

He took one look at Cortez's face and frowned. "Or… maybe not?"

"They've tagged us for search," Cortez said quietly. His expression grew slightly sheepish, and he cleared his throat. "Ah, evidently, something in our hull is interfering with their LADAR scans."

"Fuck," growled Jack. "You just_ had_ to fuck with the plating, didn't you?"

"Hey," said the pilot defensively. "This shuttle's supposed to be used for covert jobs. If I had my way, it wouldn't see broad daylight."

The krogan stirred slightly. "What's the hold up?" he demanded groggily.

"Options?" asked Hutch, with feigned cheerfulness. "Anyone?"

"Blow another hole in this fucking dump," suggested Jack.

Hutch appeared to give this due consideration. "I think that might piss Shepard off."

Cortez frowned. "There_ is_ something I could try," he said. "But it might not work."

There was a philosophical shrug from the big blond man. "I got fuck-all. Whatcha got, Steve?"

"We've got emergency vehicles inbound. If I time it right, I can capture one of their beacon flashes and ping it at control. It will release the docking hold for a few moments, until someone catches on. Haven't done it since I was a kid, though."

"I liked _her_ idea better," grumbled the krogan, jerking his head at Jack.

"What are the odds?" Hutch asked, meeting Cortez's eyes.

The pilot shrugged. "It's all timing."

Hutch grinned at him. "What did you get up to as a kid, anyway?"

The corners of the pilot's blue eyes crinkled. "Grand theft, mostly."

Hutch chuckled. "Get to it."

Cortez flexed his fingers and fixed his concentration on the controls in front of him. For a long moment, they all waited tensely. Hutch's hand gripped the back of Cortez's chair tightly. Then the pilot's hands danced over the haptics, and he gave a whoop of victory, goosing the thrusters and swinging the shuttle out of dock.

Hutch braced himself against the chair as the shuttle banked around sharply. "Let me guess: we're going to get our asses chased here to the rendezvous?"

Cortez's concentration didn't waver. "Not if we move fast enough," he replied shortly. "Hold on."

The hull shook and the thrusters whined as Cortex pushed the shuttle through a series of accelerations and turns at the limit of its tolerances. He'd flown Trident fighters during a stint in the Alliance, and was an excellent mechanic, giving him an instinctive feel for the limits of a vehicle. He wasn't the pilot Joker was - he'd be the first to admit it - but Cortez hadn't met a vehicle he couldn't master, and he had a talent for riding the redline.

Hutch was thrown back into the main compartment, his fall arrested by the krogan, who simply reached out a hand and snagged him out of the air, slamming him into an empty jump seat. Jack was swearing and clutching the bottom of her own seat, as well as bracing a hand against the hull.

"Cortez, you fucker!" she swore.

"I thought you wanted me to get the hell out of there?" Cortez called back, his voice alive, sparkling.

"Not by plowing this bucket nose first into the ground!"

A tight, exhilarated laugh was the pilot's only response.

Hutch felt a stirring in his groin. This kind of flying really turned Steve on, and the earlier stab of disappointment he felt over his sure-to-be-curtailed plans for the evening returned in spades.

God, he hated when things didn't go to plan.

* * *

To Garrus Vakarian's eternal surprise, he actually found himself enjoying picking over the security feeds, looking for leads.

The big one, of course - no pun intended - was the presence of a heavily armored krogan. But there were dozens of smaller things; he'd had no idea how many suspicious-looking people and activities went on at a human spaceport of this size. Turians were, by and large, a law-abiding species. They liked order, stability. Humans, in contrast, always seemed to take the law with a grain of salt. For instance, one human leaned casually against a railing, enjoying something Garrus had been told was called a _hamburger_, while not a meter away was a sign proclaiming NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED.

In fact, so engrossed was he in the smaller details that he nearly missed the krogan in dusty red armor that crossed the corner of one bit of footage. With a flare of his mandibles, Garrus reversed the footage and replayed it.

Sure enough, krogan, heavy armor. Just a shoulder and part of a hump, but unmistakable nonetheless.

After a moment's inner calculation to determine which camera feed would pick up the krogan next, Garrus gave a low hum and brought it up.

"Got something," he said quietly to Kryik, unable to keep the excitement from buzzing in his subvocals.

Kryik turned from his own monitors to Garrus's. "Show me."

Garrus keyed up a sequence of feeds. The first showed the initial frames that Garrus had nearly missed - a glimpse of the shoulder and hump of a large adult krogan in heavy armor. The next showed a better view of the krogan, from the side. His armor was well-used but also well-maintained, a dark, dusty red that rivaled the color on his forehead and crest, but was put to shame by the bright ruby of his one visible eye.

"Where is this?" Kryik asked, as the next camera angle came up - more of a three-quarters view, showing some deep scarring on the krogan's face and neck.

Garrus shook his head, his mandibles drawing backward in disappointment. "Oh," he said contritely, "they're from the private shuttle bays. Nowhere near the bomb site."

"Don't give up on it just yet," Kryik cautioned him, leaning over to replay a segment. "Look there," he pointed with a talon. "That human. She appears in both of these feeds."

Garrus watched the replay skeptically. "Do you really think that's important?" he asked. "This human," he pointed out a different figure, "also appears in both of the feeds."

"True," said Kryik. "But see where he is in this one?" He brought up the footage. "And then in this one, he's over here."

Garrus tipped his head. "But the one you pointed out is directly in front of the krogan in both segments," he said. "The krogan's following her."

"Exactly." Kryik tapped up some further feeds. "Let's see where they go."

There was little else to see - the human keyed in an entry code to a shuttle bay, and a moment later, the krogan followed her inside. There were no internal feeds in the shuttle bay.

"Damn private berths," growled Garrus, but Kryik was already contacting traffic control.

"Is the traffic hold still in place?"

The answer he got clearly did not please Kryik. His mandibles worked furiously. Then he said, in a chillingly quiet voice, "Let me guess. Bay 171A." Followed by, "Of course I'm right. Transfer me all the information you have on the shuttle's registry, please. And, while you're at it, information on who holds the lease on Bay 171A."

Kryik was still after he finished with traffic control, staring silently at the security monitors they'd been using. He blinked when his omni-tool pinged, and lifted his left arm to scan the transferred data.

"Registry data corrupted," he said wryly. "How convenient."

"Of course," agreed Garrus, also wryly. "Why do I get the feeling that we've found our suspect?"

But Kryik wasn't listening. His mandibles had dropped in surprise, or shock. "That can't be right," he muttered.

"What can't?" prompted Garrus, feeling a flutter in his gut.

"Bay 171A is leased by the Systems Alliance."

* * *

"Change of plans," said Shepard, deactivating her comm and settling back in her seat.

Massani glowered at her from across the shuttle. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this change of plans?"

"Because you're a crotchety old man," Shepard replied.

The glower turned into a glare. Shepard gave him her most charming smile.

"Don't tell me. This new plan has us charging straight into danger."

Shepard laughed lightly. "Nope. Just me. Old Man, you take Miss Zorah on to the safe house. Joker will drop me at a safe distance from the rendezvous, and I'll go in on foot."

Her eyes fell on the suited and helmeted form opposite her. Though Shepard had never seen a quarian before, she didn't need any experience with the species to know that this was a very nervous quarian indeed. The helmeted head was bowed over gloved, three-fingered hands that were wringing themselves, and she sat on the very edge of her seat.

"Don't worry, Miss Zorah" Shepard assured the girl. "The safe house is extremely secure, and you're with my most experienced man."

"_Please_," said the quarian in a softly trilling, accented voice, muted slightly by the helmet's pickups. She lifted her head to reveal brightly glowing eyes behind a tinted facemask.

"Just call me Tali."

* * *

A/N: Sorry. Forgot my footnote again.

*from Terry Pratchett's _Witches Abroad_


	9. Alliance

**Chapter Eight**

_**Alliance**_

Admiral Steven Hackett tugged at the bottom of his tunic, straightening the fabric before setting his palm against the apartment's door chime. He could hear the muted notes sound within, followed by a pleasant male bass calling, "Just a moment!"

True to the promise, after a moment the door's lock cycled green and the barrier slid aside to reveal the man Hackett was here to see. Standing, he would have been a relatively tall man, barrel-chested and broad-shouldered. But he was not standing. He was sitting in a custom-designed wheelchair. He smiled when he saw the admiral.

"Hackett!" he said with surprise. "What brings you here?"

Hackett gave the younger man a nod of greeting, the creases in his hawkish face shifting with his return smile. "Anderson," he replied. "Can't a man visit an old friend once in a while?"

David Anderson wheeled his chair back and waved a hand to indicate the other should enter. "If I believed you could take a few days of leave without some new crisis popping up," he answered wryly. "How are things on Arcturus?"

Hackett followed the wheelchair into a spacious main room, lined with bookshelves. "Same as always," Hackett told his friend. "Never enough hours in the day…"

"Exactly my point," said Anderson. "If this isn't an official visit, how about a drink?" He deftly wheeled himself over to an elegant sideboard and touched a panel, displaying a selection of high-end liquor.

The admiral cleared his throat sheepishly. "I… didn't exactly say that," he admitted.

"The dress blues_ are _a bit of a giveaway," Anderson chuckled.

Hackett paced to the window, clasping his hands behind his back. "This is… _officially unofficial_, if you understand me."

There was a pause. "I see," said Anderson. "Does that make it unofficial enough for a highball?"

Hackett glanced over his shoulder at his old friend, his normally ramrod-straight bearing slumping a little. He gave a resigned sigh. "Yes, I think it may well be."

"Good."

As Anderson busied himself with the alcohol, Hackett turned from the window, his eyes taking in the neatly appointed space. They fell on a framed picture on the shelves.

"How's your niece?" he asked. It was as good a lead-in as any. "What's she up to these days?"

Anderson rolled over to him, offering up a glass of amber liquid over ice. Effervescent bubbles gathered on the cubes.

"Oh, Katy's fine," he said. The affection he had for his niece was obvious in his voice. "Still comes to see me every week, like clockwork." The younger man's voice changed, hardened slightly. "As for what she's up to… I couldn't really say. She doesn't talk much about her work." Anderson stared down into his glass for a long moment, and then shrugged. "I'm pretty sure it isn't all legal."

Hackett sipped at his whiskey soda and grimaced, although not at the burn of the liquor. "You can't blame yourself, David," he said quietly. "It isn't your fault."

Anderson eyes were hard. "You're right," he said, the edge of old bitterness creeping in despite himself. "And I don't blame myself. I blame Saren."

_And the Alliance._

The words were unspoken, but Hackett knew they were there all the same. And he, unfortunately, was in the uncomfortable position of seeing both sides.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say, knowing that it didn't change a bit of the past, or the present.

Anderson shrugged again. "Not your fault, Steven. I know you did your best for us."

That much was true. Hackett had even offered to take Katy, but the Alliance denied his petition. There were children on Arcturus, but as active-duty Alliance - and an admiral to boot - without a spouse, he was considered an unacceptable candidate. The Alliance had placed Katy in foster care instead.

"Speaking of Katy," Hackett pushed on, burying past regrets with the ruthlessness of long practice, "I had an odd report cross my desk."

"Oh?" One of Anderson's dark brows rose, and his dark eyes regarded Hackett piercingly.

Hackett took another sip, trying to keep his voice casual. "Seems she was involved in saving the life of a Spectre."

"She what?" Anderson looked poleaxed for a moment, and then his brows drew down over his nose. "Are you sure it was her? Kathryn Shepard can't be an uncommon name."

"As sure as I can be," said Hackett. "The physical description matched as well."

Anderson stared into middle distance for several seconds. "Well I'll be damned," he said at last. "What happened?"

"Sniper," said Hackett laconically. "Katy pushed the Spectre out of the shot and then took off after the gunman."

Anderson shook his dark head and uttered a bark of laughter. "Sounds like Katy, all right. She definitely got John's reckless streak. Who was the Spectre? Anyone I'd've heard of?"

"Nihlus Kryik," answered Hackett, watching his friend carefully.

Anderson gave a low whistle. "Kryik? That's… big."

Hackett nodded. "Yes. It is. I've heard Udina is nearly beside himself. Katy made herself scarce immediately afterward. Kryik only got her full name from an Alliance soldier who happened to be on the scene and knew her."

Anderson frowned. "But what was Katy doing on the Citadel?" he wondered. With a snort, he slashed one hand in the air. "No, belay that. I don't want to know."

Hackett chuckled, but sobered quickly. "She wasn't, as a matter of fact. This happened here on Earth, down in San Diego."

"What the hell was a turian Spectre doing in San Diego?" Anderson's voice was incredulous, and his expression dumbfounded.

Hackett took a deep breath. "That's where things start to get officially unofficial…"

* * *

Long after Hackett had left, Anderson sat at the broad picture window, watching as the sun set and the lights of the city came on, reflecting in the waters of False Creek. His chin was propped up by one fist, elbow resting on the arm of his wheelchair. In his other hand he held a picture frame that Hackett would have found familiar.

Twenty-seven years ago, he'd introduced his best friend to his youngest sister. They were married in less than a year, and Katy had been born a few months later. Though he could have called up the image in the picture frame, Anderson had no need to - he remembered the wedding perfectly. He and John in their antique tuxedos, Rachel in a flowing, high-waisted antique gown that made her look so elegant, burgeoning belly and all. The stately lines of the three-hundred year old Hotel del Coronado behind them, with its white wood and red tiles, and the riot of color from bougainvillea planted along the paths in the palm tree-lined courtyard. There were only a bare handful of guests - John's mother, Sophie, who would die suddenly the following year from an aneurysm, Anderson and his fiance, Cynthia, and his eldest sister, Maggie. The officiant had been an Alliance chaplain named Kierney, who managed to make the military chaplain's uniform seem right at home amidst the splendor of a bygone era.

It had been a wonderful day. Anderson could still feel the joy he felt then.

Joy that had ended abruptly six years later, when he'd been called to verify the identification of John and Rachel Shepard in a San Diego police morgue. Anderson could still remember the confusion on Katy's face at the funeral, when she'd asked him when her parents were coming home.

He and Cynthia had taken in his six-year-old niece. Although he hadn't known it at the time, accepting guardianship over Katy would be one of the final nails in the coffin of his marriage. Cynthia had always wanted kids, something Anderson himself had been reluctant to commit to, given the amount of time he spent on ship duty and the dangerous nature of many of his assignments. That he was willing to put that aside for Katy when he wouldn't for their own potential children… in retrospect, Anderson could understand and sympathize with Cynthia's position. At the time, however, he was blindsided when she asked him for a divorce a year later.

Katy was only seven, and still coping, in some ways, with the loss of her parents. Anderson could have elected to give her up when Cynthia left him - active duty single parents were rare - but he couldn't bring himself to do so. After all, apart from Cynthia, the only other person Katy knew that closely was Maggie, and she was working in colony development out on Bekenstein, no more stable a life for Katy than his own. So he requested a transfer from ship duty, accepting a post at the Alliance base in San Diego, and settled down to raise his niece. Many of the images stored on the frame were from those years when it was just he and Katy.

Katy, small and serious, her hand dwarfed by his. Katy, her red curls riotous, smiling gap-toothed from his shoulders. Katy, golden and freckled and wearing shorts and an Alliance t-shirt several sizes too big for her, holding her best salute beside him.

They were good years, by and large. Katy was a good kid; easy-going, mostly obedient, academically brilliant, involved in a handful of outdoor or athletic pursuits. She loved shooting - he'd bought her an air rifle and taught her to shoot it when she'd first expressed an interest in his own weapons. As a precocious eleven-year old, she was well liked by her teachers and peers, and Anderson was proud of her. But even then, there was a fragility to her, a sense that her parents' death still weighed on the young girl.

And then the request had come in from Alliance HQ. He was needed for a very sensitive mission. Refusing wasn't an option. His name had been put forward by the human ambassador to the Citadel, Anita Goyle, herself. Anderson had sighed and contacted Cynthia, with whom he had managed to maintain a lasting friendship, and asked her if she could watch Katy for him while he was on the Citadel. Cynthia, who by then had remarried and had a son of her own barely out of diapers, agreed.

Katy was only twelve when that disastrous mission took place. Only twelve when the news reached Cynthia that he'd nearly been killed in an eezo refinery explosion. Cynthia had continued to watch Katy over the next three months as he underwent surgery after surgery at Huerta Memorial on the Citadel. When he was finally transferred to a medical center back on Earth, the Alliance had stepped in, claiming that, due to his injuries, Anderson would be unable to continue to act as Katy's guardian.

Cynthia's husband, Henry, was opposed to taking in his wife's ex-husband's niece. Hackett, out of friendship and what Anderson suspected was a strong sense of guilt, having been the one to suggest him to Ambassador Goyle, petitioned to become Katy's temporary guardian, but was denied. Maggie was out of contact, stationed now on the new colony of Eden Prime. The Alliance began to talk of foster care.

Anderson himself had been barely aware of all this, spending most of his time in a semi-conscious state brought on by the high doses of medication required to manage his condition, which was still considered critical. Against Henry's wishes, Cyntnhia elected to remain Katy's temporary guardian, at least until a long-term solution could be found, or Anderson's prognosis - which was highly uncertain - could be resolved.

Perhaps predictably, Katy, the good kid, the easy kid, began to act out. Her grades dropped, and she began skipping school, often to pester the staff at the medical center to be allowed to visit him. Her behavior became sullen, uncooperative, and violent. After six months, Cynthia had had enough, and Katy was placed into foster care.

By that time Anderson was being weaned off the heaviest of his medication, and the doctors had made their pronouncement - he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his days, or until medical science advanced far enough to undo the damage that had been done. As soon as he was able, Anderson would be transferred to a long-term care and rehabilitation facility. Katy would remain in foster care, despite the fact that Maggie - now apprised of events - had petitioned for custody of her niece.

The next few years were the hardest of Anderson's life. There were no pictures from that time, only remembered pain. The pain of his crippled body, and the pain of seeing his niece's future - once bright and as limitless as the stars above - collapse into ashes.

After a full year in the medical center, he was transferred to a long-term care facility. Katy visited him throughout it all, but refused to talk about anything relating to her behavior or truancy, no matter how hard he pushed. She talked instead about his progress, about books she'd read or music or vids she liked, and about how she planned to take the equivalency exam at fourteen and apply for emancipation, so she could take care of him when he was ready to come home.

Nothing he could say or do convinced her to abandon her plan, and, the day after her fourteenth birthday, her equivalency score in hand - and nearly a perfect one at that - Katy applied to become an emancipated minor.

_I__'m sorry_, he offered up to John and Rachel's spirits, wherever they were, _I know I__'ve already failed you both, you and Katy. And now this… _

_I wish I knew what you__'d do in this situation, Shepard. _

_I wish I knew._

* * *

Hackett regarded the two marines before him appraisingly. One of the two he already knew. The other he was aware of by reputation only, though he'd made sure to look over his personnel file prior to this meeting.

They were a study in contrasts. Staff Lieutenant James Vega was a big man, the kind who looked like could be used as a human battering ram. Young, brash, cocky and sometimes reckless, with something of an attitude, but a damn good soldier. Lieutenant Commander Kaiden Alenko was trim and neat - a biotic; analytical, precise. Older, steady, reliable as hell.

But the two things they had in common were by far more important to Hackett; each had multiple commendations in their file, and they were both, by all accounts, as loyal as the day was long, thank God.

"Gentlemen," Hackett said, gesturing slightly. "You may be seated."

Vega dropped into his chair and rested his beefy elbows against the table. Alenko settled himself neatly, lacing his fingers together and resting his clasped hands on the table. If either of them had been looking for it, they might have seen the tiniest twitch to the corner of Hackett's mouth. Contrasts.

"If I may ask, sir," said Vega, with a forthrightness typical of the man, "what's this about?" His eyes were narrowed, as if something didn't quite add up. "You asked me to meet you here for a chat, off the record, but you're wearing your blues, sir."

Alenko's expression revealed nothing, but when Hackett met his eyes, the commander said, "I have to say I'm curious as well."

Hackett nodded. "You are right, of course. I did indicate that this meeting would be off the record, and it will be. But, shall we say, I am still an Alliance officer. Understood?"

Vega's brows rose, and he gave a low whistle. "I think I get what you're saying, Admiral."

Alenko's face had become, if anything, even more wooden, but he gave a short nod. "Understood, sir."

"Good," said Hackett with satisfaction, pulling out the third chair and seating himself. His eyes traveled once more from face to face. "There was an incident a few days ago," he began, "involving a Council Spectre."

"Kryik, right," acknowledged Vega. His brow crinkled. "But we've already submitted reports, sir."

"I know," agreed Hackett. "I've read them. What I'd like to know now - off the record - is what you might know about the woman mentioned in the reports. The woman you called Shepard."

"Shepard?" Vega looked surprised. "Wait. You don't think she… I dunno… set that up, do you sir?"

Hackett raised a grizzled eyebrow. "It would surprise you if you learned that she had?"

"Well, yeah." The big man shifted uncomfortably. "That's… It's just…" he floundered, then raised his eyes to Hackett's. "Yeah," he finished. "It would."

"Is there anything you'd like to add to your report at this time, Lieutenant?" Hackett asked mildly.

Vega straightened to something just a fraction below attention. "Sir, no, sir," he replied immediately. "My report was entirely correct and complete, sir."

Hackett studied the young man for a moment. "Very well," he said. "Is there something, perhaps, you can tell me about Shepard in _addition_ to what was in your report?" He didn't miss the way Alenko's eyes darted, fractionally, in Vega's direction.

Vega returned his scrutiny. "Off the record, you said, right?" he asked, very clearly.

Hackett gave a short nod. "Off the record," he agreed.

Vega huffed out a heavy sigh. "You've gotta understand, sir, Shepard's done a lot for the neighborhood. I grew up in the Tenth, sir, and my uncle still lives there. And you talk to anyone in the Tenth, they'll tell you they know someone Shepard's helped out. She's good people, sir. I mean that."

Hackett nodded again. "Sounds commendable. Why would you be reluctant to state this on the record?"

Vega's eyes shifted away from him; the marine stared very carefully at a point just over Hackett's left shoulder. "Because she's the leader of the street gang known as the Tenth Street Reds, sir."

"I see," said Hackett, noncommittally. "You didn't think that was a pertinent fact for your report, Lieutenant?"

"Nosir. She was armed, she reacted to protect the… Mr. Kryik, and she attempted to apprehend the gunman. Those were the facts. Claiming that she did so because she was the leader of the Reds would have been speculation on my part, sir."

"I see," Hackett repeated, controlling the twitch of his mouth with an effort. "Can I take it that you know Shepard personally, then?"

Vega's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "Yes. Sir."

"_How_ personally?"

This earned him a reproachful look from the marine. "Sir," he protested.

"Just answer the question, Lieutenant," Hackett replied.

Vega shot him another protesting glance, which Hackett ingored, and then said, "It's nothing like that. I met her about three years ago, in the neighborhood, when I was on leave and staying with my uncle. She's a… friend, I guess. We've hung out, had a few beers, played some pool, poker. Shot the shit. You know? She's… an easy person to know. _Sympatico_."

"You ever talk to her about the Alliance?" Hackett's words were quick and sharp.

Now the big man looked affronted. "No! I mean, she knows I'm a marine, and she's probably heard me bitch about things like the food in the mess, but no. I don't make it a habit to discuss sensitive information with non-Alliance personnel," he added stiffly.

Hackett knew the man well enough to know he was telling the truth. And to know that he'd be having a minor confrontation with the soldier over the implied security breach within an hour of the end of this meeting.

"What about you, Commander?" Hackett shifted his focus to the other man suddenly, giving Vega a chance to cool off before pressing him further.

Alenko shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't add anything to the conversation, Admiral," he said frankly. "I just met Shepard earlier that afternoon."

"What was your impression of her?" Hackett asked.

Alenko shrugged again. "Pretty. Flirty. Smart." He glanced at Vega, adding, almost apologetically, "Dangerous."

"Dangerous how?"

The biotic was quiet for a moment, as if trying to find the right words. "The kind of dangerous you hope to have on your side in a fight," he said finally.

Hackett narrowed his eyes briefly. "You assessed her as a threat?"

Alenko shook his head emphatically. "No, sir." His brow furrowed and he gestured vaguely with one hand. "Let's say… if she was a soldier, I might have said that I bet she was a helluva good one. There's… she carries herself with confidence, sir. Like… like she's daring the world to throw whatever it can at her, because she can take it." A brief smile crossed his face, changing his whole demeanor to one of boyish innocence. "And I wouldn't recommend playing pool with her, sir."

Hackett couldn't help the little sigh that left him. He just hoped it was quiet enough that the other two men hadn't noticed. He pushed back his chair and rose, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing a few steps away from the table.

"It may," he began with his back to the marines, "or may not," he risked a glance over his shoulder before resolutely staring at the wall again, "surprise you to learn that Shepard grew up in a military household. Her father was a decorated marine, a graduate of the N7 program, and a damn fine soldier."

He turned back to them. "We… that is to say_ Alliance intelligence_… believes that Shepard might have become drawn in to what is likely to be a significant conflict between the Council - with the Alliance - and rogue elements." Hackett held up a hand to forestall the anticipated outburst from Vega. "Not as an agent of either side," he said, "but as the wildcard in all this."

"And it is as a wildcard that she may prove most valuable to us," he continued, hating himself for the words. "As such, we cannot approach her openly. Her value would be compromised were those rogue elements to believe she was merely a pawn of the Alliance - or the Council. However, we also want to be sure that, should she gain an advantage, ultimately her actions are in our best interests."

Vega scowled. "I'm not sure I like where this is going, sir."

Hackett set his jaw and placed his hands on the table, leaning forward and fixing him with a fierce stare. "Like it or not, Lieutenant, Shepard may be the vital link in this. We know that our own ranks are compromised. Shepard may be our best hope for coming out of this on top. And believe me, gentlemen, we need to come out on top."

"You're using her as your stalking horse." There was accusation in Vega's voice, and his expression was stony.

Inwardly, Hackett winced, but he knew his face showed nothing of his own inner turmoil. "Yes," he answered, chillingly honest. "We are."

There was silence when he finished speaking. It dragged on for a few seconds too long before Alenko said, haltingly, "What would you need us to do, Admiral?"

"Your mission will be threefold. First, you'll need to infiltrate Shepard's inner circle. Once there, you'll obtain all the information you can on the rogue elements we're after, and attempt to steer her actions in ways that will further the Alliance's objectives." He paused, wishing again that he dared just contact Katy openly.

"Is that all, sir?" asked Alenko, when the pause stretched another heartbeat.

"No," said Hackett, his voice softening slightly. "The last part of your mission is to keep her safe, gentlemen."

Vega blinked in surprise.

Hackett straightened up and continued. "You will both be officially placed on administrative leave, ostensibly to investigate potential discrepancies in your reports from the Shepard incident. Your friendship with Shepard will be leaked, Lieutenant. You have been known to be vocal in the past when the brass make decisions you don't agree with - and I would like you to be as vocal as you can be about your displeasure with your status, and with our apparent suspicion of Shepard."

"In a few days, you will walk out of another debriefing session with myself and another officer. When you do, you will go directly to Shepard and volunteer to help her. Alenko, you will go with him, as if he talked you into it."

Hackett looked from one man to the other. "Unofficially - very unofficially - you will be considered on special assignment. There will be very limited help I can provide you once you are in place, and I'm afraid that many details are on a need-to-know basis."

Alenko gave a shake of his head. "Is there anything you_ can_ tell us, sir?"

"Yes, although I expect you to treat it as highly classified." Hackett jerked his chin affirmatively, and began to pace. "About a galactic standard month ago, an archeological team on the colony world of Eden Prime uncovered a prothean artifact of immense value."

He heard the intake of breath from both marines, but didn't allow them time to ask questions. "As per the protocol in these matters, the human ambassador to the Citadel notified the Council of the find, and the Council sent a team to retrieve the artifact and bring it to the Citadel for study. But before the Council team could arrive on Eden Prime, two seperate rogue factions attacked the colony simultaneously. One of them was successful in seizing the artifact, and, as you know, extensive damage was done to the colony's spaceport and the surrounding areas, which included the dig site."

"I can't go into any further details regarding the artifact, but I can tell you the identity of the two rogue elements. One is a human splinter group calling itself Cerberus. The other is a turian by the name of Saren Arterius, a former Spectre."

"Wait," interrupted Alenko. "A turian Spectre? Was Kryik…"

"No," Hackett said firmly. "Kryik is not Arterius. Officially, Kryik is here looking for leads on Saren, though he may have other missions the Council doesn't see fit to share with us."

"If you don't mind my asking, sir… What does Shepard have to do with all this?" Vega asked. "She stopped an attack on Kryik, sure. You think this Saren will come after her for it, or something?"

Hackett shook his head. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you any more. Just rest assured that there is reason to suspect that Shepard is involved. And that she almost certainly doesn't know what she's stumbled into."

"_Mierda_," muttered Vega, only partly under his breath.

"You can say that again," muttered Alenko, in response.

"Given the highly unofficial nature of this mission, I can't order you," Hackett said seriously. "But I hope that I have chosen my people wisely."

"Well, when you put it that way, sir…" said Vega, and grinned his cocky grin.

"You can count on us, Admiral."


End file.
